John Piper's Desiring God Website Links for

End of Life Issues and Suffering

End of Life Issues:

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TopicIndex/86_Death_and_Dying/

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/RecentlyAdded/3149_Magnifying_the_Gospel_and_EndofLife_Issues/

http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=3376

http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=3379

Suffering:

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/AskPastorJohn/ByTopic/32/3173_How_do_you_talk_about_suffering

_with_people_who_are_in_the_midst_of_it/

Gird your mind and heart before suffering comes:

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/1985/498_Job_Wrestling_with_Suffering/

Like his predecessor, William Cowper discerns the paradoxes of affliction.  In a short poem titled "Happy Solitude - Unhappy Men" (1782), he writes:

My heart is easy and my burden light;

I smile, though sad, when Thou art in my sight;

The more my woes in secret I deplore,

I taste thy goodness and I love thee more.  (v.5, p. 285)

A smile paradoxically emerges in the midst of sadness; gustatory pleasure belies the experience of secret woe.  And in one of his hymns, titled "Light Shining Out of Darkness" (1779), Cowper asserts:

Ye fearful saints fresh courage take,

The clouds ye so much dread

Are big with mercy, shall break

In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,

But trust Him for His grace;

Behind a frowning providence,

He hides a smiling face.  (v. 5, p. 56)

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