Courage to Endure

A friend told me an amazing story yesterday, the story of how he came to Australia. His father was a high ranking soldier in the south Vietnamese army during the Vietnam war. His family suffered terrible persecution after the communists took over, and in the early 80s he fled the country. He faced pirates, starvation, drowning and more before he finally landed in Malaysia and was accepted as a refugee (he now has an excellent career in our country, and is a productive citizen). He is so appreciative of living in a free country, by the way.

Hearing a story like that, my first reaction was, "My problems are so small." But I don't think that's quite the right reaction - we all have genuine troubles, and they are significant even if they are not on the same scale as some. A better reaction is to be encouraged by the people who endure terrible hardships, and to learn from the example of their courage.

I just read the following from a talk Piper gave on Womanhood (ht: rd), and it was inspiring. The world will not understand these sentiments -

I don't like wimpy women. I didn't marry one. With Noel, I'm trying to raise Talitha, who turns 13 on Saturday, not to be one. The opposite of a wimpy woman is not a brash, pushy, loud, controlling, sassy, uppity, arrogant Amazon.

The opposite of a wimpy woman is 14-year-old Marie Durant when in the 17th century in France was arrested for being a Protestant, put in prison, and told, "You may get out for one phrase: I abjure." She wrote on the wall of her cell, "I resist," and stayed there 38 years until she was dead doing just that.¹ That's the opposite of a wimpy woman.

Another opposite of a wimpy woman is Gladys Staines. In 1999, remember the story? After serving for three decades with her husband Graham in India, to the lepers, heard one day that her husband Graham and little Phillip (10) and Timothy (6) had been set on fire, burned alive in the back of their car. She said to the newspapers, "I have only one message for the people of India. I am not bitter, neither am I angry. Let us burn hatred and spread the flame of Christ's love."

The opposite of a wimpy woman is her daughter, well named, Esther. When asked by the reporters, "How do you feel about your father's murder?" She said (she was 13), "I praise the Lord that He found my father worthy to die for Him."