Suffering and Invitation
In his book Will You Join in Our Crusade which Steve Mann looks at the Invitation of the Gospels unlocked by the inspiration of Les Miserables. Mann reminds us that “God does not immunize the Christian from the suffering of life but promises that we will find God in the midst, transforming from the inside out. For the Greeks , the ideal was that of the gods on Mount Olympus. They were removed from suffering – literally (apatheia = without suffering). It’s the root of the English word apathy because to be removed from suffering is also to be disengaged. I find a lot of apathy in the church and I suspect it is because we don’t want to suffer. Invite someone today to take a closer look at Christ and the church and we may find that we suffer because of the invitation, but find God in the middle of it.
