In addition to having the best accent ever (Strom Thurmond running a close second ;-)), Alistair Begg
can discuss some of the ‘less pleasant’ aspects of Christianity with a poignancy I’ve seen in few others.

His TableTalk article, “Pain: God’s Megaphone”, is posted over at the Ligonier blog and is worth a read.

Some highlights:

The biblical writer James encourages his readers when faced with trials to welcome them as friends rather than resenting them as intruders. Instead of running and hiding we are to face them in the awareness that they come to prove us and to improve us.

I think of a nuclear physicist in our church in Scotland who attended out of deference to his wife and three young daughters. He listened to the sermons with an air of polite indifference; he accepted a copy of John Stott’s Basic Christianity but remained secure in his scientific shell. It was only when his fourth child, a son, died at eleven months that the megaphone sounded. Recognizing that his worldview was inadequate to deal with tragedy and loss, he found himself reaching beyond his shadow land to find himself caught up in the embrace of the God who is there.

It is also true that God uses suffering to wean His children away from the plausible sources of false happiness. The Christian may grow drowsy in the sun but will not fall asleep in the fire or the flood.

Read the entire article here.