Gospel News — Mar-May 2012

amazingly similar experiences to ourselves. And the extraordinary similarity of experience is in fact designed by God; because these are meetings and connections made in Heaven. We are here for each other, and all we experience is in a sense for others. This opens another window onto the meaning of personal suffering; another take on the eternal question "Why?". There's an element to it which isn't for our benefit at all, but for others. Take Job. That man was "perfect" and solidly with the Lord at the start of the book, and he is the same at the end of the book. The purpose of his sufferings was perhaps not therefore simply for his own personal development, but for the conversion of the three friends. The palsied man was palsied and was healed so that others might learn that the Son of Man had power to forgive sins (Mt. 10:6-9).

We too easily assume that nobody else could ever understand our life path, the way we have taken. We too quickly consider that others have a charmed life. Some seem to have great health and family relationships, money, security and spirituality. But in fact beneath all that veneer there simply has to be in every life lived in Christ an awful co-suffering with Him. People in Christ go through the most awful, unspeakable agonies. Every one of us does. Nobody gets off light. It just seems to our limited vision that some do. We all wrestle with wild beasts at Ephesus, and are saved out of the mouth of the lion. Whatever the Corinthians were enduring, it was in essence "the same suffering" as Paul endured in that arena. And there should therefore have been a meeting of minds; the basis of our fellowship is largely intended to be our common experience in Christ. Ideas and theories tend to divide; experience unites. And what people need far more than anything else, than any smart expositions or mental gymnastics with Scripture, more than money, is the simple comfort of Christ's love.

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We have each received that comfort ourselves in our life experiences; and we are to make the functioning of Christ's body effective by getting out there and sharing that comfort with others. For this is how, mechanically as it were, on the ground, in reality, "we [who] share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, in Christ share abundantly in comfort too".

--Duncan Heaster

Joseph the Saviour

Bro Gideon Hankomone (Mazabuka, Zambia)

There is no more amazing life story in the Old Testament than that of Joseph. God's master plan was for Joseph to become the second most powerful man in Egypt, the assistant to Pharaoh who ruled the greatest nation on earth at that time. But how does a Jewish young man become number two in a foreign land? Through his jealous brothers, he was betrayed and beaten and finally sold into slavery which is how he came to be in Egypt.

Betrayal, beating, rejection, imprisonment – that is a lot of fire, (which is the symble of trial) but it was that very fire that produced the amazingly beautiful outcome. Joseph was put in a world class position where he saved many lives from famine, including the lives of his own family members. Joseph later said to the brothers who betrayed him, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today" (Gen 50:20). Earlier on, Joseph explained to them the divine plan that was being accomplished, even through their sin, "It was not you who sent me here, but God" (Gen 45:5).

Whatever happens to us, brethren and sisters, has first to pass through our Father's hands; God