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Few men of this century have understood better the inevitability of suffering than Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He seems never to have wavered in his Christian antagonism to the Nazi regime, although it meant for him imprisonment, the threat of torture, danger to his own family and finally death. He was executed by the direct order of Heinrich Himmler in April 1945 in the Flossenburg concentration camp, only a few days before it was liberated. It was the fulfillment of what he had always believed and taught: “Suffering, then, is the badge of true discipleship. The disciple is not above his master. Following Christ means passio passive, suffering because we have to suffer. That is why Luher reckoned suffering among the marks of the true Church, and one of the memoranda drawn up in preparation for the Augsburg Confession similarly defines the Church as the community of those ‘who are persecuted and martyred for the gospel’s sake’… Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians should be called upon to suffer. In fact, it is a joy and a token of his grace.”
John R.W. Stott, Christian Counter-Culture: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1978), 53
ILLUSTRATION… From Stress/Unstress by Keith W. Wehnert, 1981, Augsburg
Symptoms of Stress Overload
1. Decision-making becomes difficult (both major and minor kinds).
2. Excessive daydreaming or fantasizing about “getting away from it all.”
3. Increased use of cigarettes and/or alcohol.
4. Increased use of tranquilizers and “uppers.”
5. Thoughts trail off while speaking or writing.
6. Excessive worrying about all things.
7. Sudden outbursts of temper and hostility.
8. Paranoid ideas and mistrust of friends and family.
9. Forgetfulness for appointments, deadlines, dates.
10. Frequent spells of brooding and feeling of inadequacy.
11. Reversals in usual behavior.
Some fascinating psychological detective work was once done in a second-grade classroom. The teacher had complained that the children were getting harder and harder to control. They were standing up and roaming around the room rather than doing their work.
Two psychologists spent several days at the back of the room with stopwatches, carefully observing the behavior of both the children and the teacher. Every ten seconds they recorded on their pads how many children were out of their seats. On average, some child was standing 360 times in every 20-minute period and the teacher said “Sit down!” 7 times in every 20-minute period.
The psychologists suggested that she consciously increase the number of times she commanded “Sit down!” and see what would happen. So in the next few days, according to observers, she yelled, “Sit down!” an average of 27.5 times per 20 minute period. Did that change the children’s behavior? Indeed it did. They were out of their seats 540 times per period, or an increase of 50% …
Here is the kicker. For the final week, the researchers asked that the teacher refrain entirely from yelling “Sit down!” and instead quietly compliment children who were staying in their seats doing their work. The result? The roaming about decreased by 33%, the best behavior for the entire experiment.
Alan Loy McGinnis, The Friendship Factor (Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House, 1979), 93-94.
Do you have at least one person nearby whom you can call on in times of personal distress?
• Do you have several people whom you can visit with little advance warning without apology?
• Do you have several people with whom you can share recreational activities?
• Do you have people who will lend you money if you need it, or those who will care for you in practic...
“When the members walk with the fear of the Lord before their eyes and with the Spirit’s encouraging voice in their hearts, the church will be strong and will also surely multiply.” [R.C.H. Lenski. The Interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub., 1961.) p. 381]
Did you know that Einstein was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read? Isaac Newton did poorly in grade school. A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he had "no good ideas." Leo Trotsky flunked out of college. Haydn gave up on ever making a musician of Beethoven, who seemed a slow and plodding young man with no apparent talent - except a belief in music.
Alan Loy McGinnis, Bringing Out the Best In People: How to Enjoy Helping Others Excel (Augsburg Pub. House 1985), 34.
During the 19th century more than half of the infants died in their first year of life from a disease called marasmus, a Greek word meaning “wasting away.” As late as the 1920’s …the death rate for infants under one year of age in various U.S. foundling institutions was close to 100%! Dr. Henry Chapin’s detective work on this alarming phenomenon is a fascinating tale.
A distinguished New York pediatrician, Dr. Chapin noted that the infants were kept in sterile, neat, tidy wards, but were rarely picked up. Chapin brought in women to hold babies, coo to them, and stroke them, and the mortality rate dropped drastically.
Who was responsible for all those babies who had died unnecessarily? Not the foundling home directors, for they were operating on the best “scientific” information available to them. The real villain was one Emmett Holt Sr., professor of pediatrics at Columbia University. Holt was the author of the booklet The Care and Feeding of Children, which was first published in 1894 and was in its 15th edition in 1935. During its long ascendancy, it was the supreme authority, the Dr. Spock of its time. And it is in this book that the author urged mothers to abolish the cradle and refuse to pick up the baby when it cried, for fear of spoiling it with too much handling. Tender loving care would have been considered “unscientific.”
We now know that small children become irritable and hyperactive without adequate body contact. In various experiments with normal and subnormal youngsters, those who had the most physical contact with parents or attendants learned to walk and talk earliest and had the highest IQs.
Alan Loy McGinnis, The Friendship Factor (Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House, 1979), 86.
Symptoms of stress overload:
1. Decision-making becomes difficult (both major and minor kinds).
2. Excessive daydreaming or fantasizing about "getting away from it all."
3. Increased use of cigarettes and/or alcohol.
4. Increased use of tranquilizers and "uppers."
5. Thoughts trail off while speaking or writing.
6. Excessive worrying about all things.
7. Sudden outbursts of temper and hostility.
8. Paranoid ideas and mistrust of friends and family.
9. Forgetfulness for appointments, de...
"If, now, Christ is our brother, I should like to know what we still lack? Brethren in the flesh have common possessions, have together one father, one inheritance otherwise they would not be brethren... All that Jesus has gained on this great day of his resurrection he has not acquired for himself only but also for all his brethren."
(Lenski, R. C. H.: The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel. Minneapolis, MN. : Augsburg Publishing House, 1961, S. 1159).
