I was introduced to a new blog today by Mike Metzger (thanks to JollyBlogger). What a find this blog is… in March, Mike blogged about Good Friday in a fantastic post called, “Don’t Worry, Be Sad.” He quotes Peggy Noonan with a remarkable quote:
“I think we have lost the old knowledge that happiness is overrated. Our ancestors believed in two worlds, and understood this to be the solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short one. We actually expected to find happiness here on earth, and our search for it has caused such unhappiness,” writes Peggy Noonan. “If you do not believe in another, higher world, then you are not disappointed when the world does not give you a good measure of its riches, you are despairing.” (Peggy Noonan, “You’d cry too if it happened to you: We have lost the old knowledge that happiness is overrated,” Forbes Magazine: September 14, 1992.)
We’ve lost so very much with the Americanized version of Christianity… religious “liberty” has made us… wimps.
Hopefully, you see in these writings a man who is staying The Course and pursuing The Path amidst the pitfalls and selfish ways of being a son of Adam. I pray earnestly that my writing would encourage some of you by showing you that this journey - though arduous and sometimes tragic - is a journey of great satisfaction. A satisfaction greater than our greatest imaginings. The trials and refining fire of tribulation are to be recognized as a small shadow of the suffering of our Savior so that we can rejoice, as Peter and the disciples did, to be counted worthy to suffer for the sake of the Name.