This is the first excerpt from a book and video project on finding hope in suffering I’m working on this year. There will be multiple excerpts from this project in coming days here on the blog. This project is the one I asked for your help about a few weeks ago.
In case you missed that post, here’s the link for how you can help with this project:
2 Timothy 2:12 DLNT if we are enduring, we will also reign with Him
I feel like I’ve been writing this book for eleven years now since the onset of chronic illnesses. With that in mind, please know you’re not reading the final copy of this book, just a rough draft in progress. Only the Scripture contained in this book doesn’t need any work done on it or help given to it, unlike me. But I just couldn’t wait to share this book with you because it’s written from my heart to yours and for my heart and yours.
Our lives are books of a very good story which stretches from Eden into eternity. Some chapters are far harder to write or read than others, as evidenced by the many prayers, tears, and longings referred to in this book. With that in mind, the words in this book are but a piece given in love from my heart to yours. And of a love which will then hopefully then go on from your heart to others. Yet the very good news is that God’s not finished with His good story, or me or you, yet. There’s opportunities every day for sanctification into the likeness of our Savior, especially when the days seem dusty, dark, and dire like a page taken from Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath book about the Great Dust Bowl.
So, if you’ve picked up this book needing hope for yet another dusty day, take heart. Remember the One Who formed Adam from the dust is the same One using dusty days to form our lives to be like the last Adam, our Jesus (see Genesis 2:7 and 1 Corinthians 15:45). As Christians, our hope in our God doesn’t disappoint or deny, but rather grows as we dig deeper and deeper for faith amidst the dust threatening to clog our souls (see Romans 5:5). For there in the dust, we learn that only God’s Presence strengthens and soothes, especially when the pain brings us to our faces in the dust (see 2 Corinthians 1:3-4). God doesn’t leave us or lose us to pain; He stays, and that alone is enough for us here in the pain.
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written by and copyrighted to Beth Madison, Ph.D., 2023
Soul Scientist 
Don’t know how others make it in this world without the hope we have in Jesus Christ.
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Exactly yes
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