Lover of the Least, Vol 16
by Keith Johnson
2024 – A Great Year for Suffering
“The Fellowship of His Sufferings”
This life is about Suffering! In his song, “A Human Touch”, Jackson Browne writes:
You can call it a decision. I say it’s how we’re made. There’s no point in shouting from your island, proclaiming Only Jesus Saves!
There will always be suffering, there will always be pain. But because of it, there will always be love and love we know, it will remain.
For me, a Human Love, a Human Touch, is just not enough. It is fleeting and often unstable. I need a supernatural love and a supernatural touch that will never leave me or forsake me; especially during times of suffering and pain.
And 2024 has been a “A Great Year for Suffering and Pain”:
Our Burmese friends struggle daily for food, water, education and medicine amidst a devastating War.
Bombed-out Church in Chin State
Burmese War Widows
Our Nepali friends along the river in Kathmandu struggling with floods once again.
Before: Joshua sleeping on a cot all day
After: New wheelchair for Joshua
My wife in the Hospital 4 times in 2 years with her last visit in August nearly fatal.
Detached Retina in my right eye and both knees are bone on bone.
A young teenage boy with a broken family suffering from mental and physical pain
1000 Refugees (over 300 families) outside of Yangon living in the jungle with no jobs, no food, no electricity, no land, no support; running from the Burmese Military
Refugees fleeing their bombed villages
At Lover of the Least, we run to trouble, full of pain and suffering. We try not to shout from our safe places that “Only Jesus Saves”. We try, by the grace of God, to live it through our actions with “The Least”. We are learning that if you want to know Him and the power of his resurrection you must suffer. Total Depravity is just that: Total. There is no option.
“I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
