Hidden Sorrow, Lasting Joy Book

If you ever feel that the prosperity and comfort of modern life stifle spirituality while cushioning people from suffering, perhaps you should read this book. Anneke Companjen has painstakingly recorded at first hand the suffering of women from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Europe for whom a belief in Christ has been anything but a spiritual sop. Women for whose pastor or missionary husbands the international community of Christians often prays when they are arrested or killed but who, Companjen feels, are overlooked themselves. Poverty, persecution, rape, torture, the murders of family and friends--this is the harvest these women have reaped, yet time and time again, reading these accounts, you are struck not by the bitterness but by the presence of joy in their lives. Take 79-year-old Alice Yuan, whose husband Alan languished in a Chinese jail for 22 years. She was stigmatised due to her faith and viciously bullied by members of one of China's humiliating "self-criticism" groups. Now she welcomes people to the huge church meetings she and pastor Alan hold in their tiny flat. When asked by Companjen what she wanted prayer for, she replied: "Please pray that more people in our country will come to know Christ." There are plenty more stories like Alice's. Palestinian Imm Basem whose son was tortured by the Israelis and Egyptian Nahed Metwalli, a Muslim convert who fled her homeland fearing for her life. When you feel ground down, their stoicism is an embarrassing reminder of what it is really like to face troubles. --Amanda CameronRead More