Hardship

A viral screenshot recently sparked debate after someone received a text message offering support during a divorce. The message, “I’m so sorry to hear you’re going through such a tough time. It’s very normal to feel what you’re feeling for a while. Love is a hard come down,” struck the recipient as oddly impersonal and “canned.” Suspicion grew when a friend pointed out the straight apostrophes-a hallmark of AI-generated text, such as those produced by ChatGPT.

Since ChatGPT’s 2022 launch, people have increasingly turned to AI for help with emotionally difficult messages-breakups, condolences, even wedding vows. Public reaction is often negative, with critics lamenting the loss of genuine human connection and the rise of awkward, robotic phrasing. The phrase “Love is a hard come down” became emblematic of this disconnect: a human in pain seeking comfort, and receiving what felt like a digital ghostwriter’s response instead.

Why do people turn to AI? Because expressing support during someone’s crisis is notoriously hard. Many struggle to find the right words, sometimes choosing silence (ghosting) over risking an awkward reply. In this context, using ChatGPT at least ensures a response is sent-even if it lacks warmth.

This dilemma is not new. For centuries, people have grappled with what to say in the face of grief or hardship. Google searches like “What to say to someone…with cancer…who is dying” reveal an endless need for guidance. Sitting shiva (sitting with someone in mourning) is not something you can really do in the metaverse. Are you supposed to mute yourself during a Zoom funeral?

Ultimately, the most important rule remains unchanged: Show up. Bring some bagels.

Despite decades of medical and cosmetic innovations, we haven't quite yet reached Never-Never Land, where no one ever grows older. But we're not that far away from a related place, Never-Lost Land, where no one and nothing gets lost.

According to an article in The New Yorker by Tim Lu, we've entered an age of Never-Lost Land, where no one and nothing gets lost. Thanks to G.P.S, Bluetooth, and the Internet, it is becoming harder both to become lost and to lose things.

This generation could be the last to have a real sense of what it means to get lost or to lose treasured objects. "Get lost" will become an archaic expression. Most of us will react to that possibility with relief. Yet it seems worth wondering whether something will be lost in Never-Lost Land, in a world without such a common and universally defining experience.

Sure, it's a relief, Lu argues, but have we lost something in the process of never losing anything. Lu continues: "While no one wants to lose their dog, or treasured object, maybe there's something to be gained by losing things, in the right dosage, at least … It helps toughen us, and it helps us understand the way the world actually is, which is to say, really quite indifferent to our well-being." He also thinks that by losing things it helps us stay less attached to the material world.

But will we ever reach Never-Lost Land? Wu doesn't think so. Instead, he thinks we will live in Nearly-Never-Lost Land, "where loss will be less common, but, when it does happen, even more traumatizing." He ends by saying, "It is something of the paradox of technological progress that, in our efforts to become invulnerable, we usually gain new, unexpected vulnerabilities, leaving us in vaguely the same condition after all."

For Mike Witmer, it began as a neighborly holiday game. Now it has become an enduring tribute. The Witmer’s Christmas lights were already up when Mike heard that his daughter’s friend from the swim team, Kevin, age 11, was coming home from the hospital, having been hospitalized with cancer. So, Mike decided to write “Get Well Kevin” in lights, and Mike’s wife told Kevin’s folks to swing through their court on their way home from the hospital.

Kevin loved the display, and he asked his mom, “Do you think Mr. Witmer will put my name in lights every year?” When Mike heard that his heart crushed and he thought, “Well, how can I not?” Kevin’s cancer went into remission, but every year Mike would hide the words “Hi” and “Kevin” in his display for Kevin to find it--like a Where’s Waldo? game between them.

Sadly, Kevin’s cancer returned, and he died at age 19. Mike spoke at Kevin’s funeral, telling the mourners he’d be making his “Hi Kevin” sign bigger that year, so Kevin would be able to see it from heaven. It has been on Mike’s garage roof every Christmas ever since.

“In the beginning,” Mike said, “my annual ‘Hi Kevin’ was just a silly gesture to a really nice kid who had been through some tough times. But it has been my honor to keep the salute going for his friends and family.”

Seven-time Superbowl champion Tom Brady was inducted into the New England Patriots Hall of Fame in a ceremony at Gillette Stadium on June 12, 2024. He thanked many people who helped him along the way. Near the end of his 20-minute speech, he spoke about the important life lessons he learned that made him and his team successful.

I would encourage everyone to play football for the simple reason that it is hard. It's hard when you're young to wake up in the offseason at 6:00 A.M. to go train and work out knowing that all your friends are sleeping in and eating pancakes. It's hard when you're on your way to practice, weighed down with all your gear and it's 90° out and all the other kids are at the pool or at the beach. And your body is already completely exhausted from workouts in two-a-days. It's hard to throw, catch, block and tackle and hit kids when they're way bigger and way more developed than you, only to go home that night bruised and battered and strained but knowing you have to show up again the next day for just the chance to try again.

But understand this: life is hard. No matter who you are, there are bumps and hits and bruises along the way. And my advice is to prepare yourself because football lessons teach us that success and achievement come from overcoming adversity. And that team accomplishment far exceeds anyone's individual goals. To be successful at anything, the truth is you don't have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren't: consistent, determined and willing to work for it. No shortcuts. If you look at all my teammates here tonight, it would be impossible to find better examples of men who embody that work ethic, integrity, purpose, determination and discipline that it takes to be a champion in life.

Editor’s Note: You can watch the video here (16 min. 45 sec – 18 min. 48 sec).

From the Roman Empire to the Maya civilization, history is filled with social collapses. Traditionally, historians have studied these downturns qualitatively, by diving into the twists and turns of individual societies.

But a team of scientists has taken a broader approach, looking for enduring patterns of human behavior on a vaster scale of time and space. In a study published in May 2024, the researchers wanted to answer a profound question: Why are some societies more resilient than others?

The study, published in the journal Nature, compared 16 societies scattered across the world, in places like the Yukon and the Australian outback. With powerful statistical models, the researchers analyzed 30,000 years of archaeological records, tracing the impact of wars, famines, and climate change.

The researchers looked for factors that explained why societies in some cases suffered long, deep downturns, while others experienced smaller drops in their populations and bounced back more quickly.

One feature that stood out was the frequency of downturns. You might expect that going through a lot of them would wear societies down, making them more vulnerable to new catastrophes. But the opposite seems to have occurred. They found that going through downturns enabled societies to get through future shocks faster. The more often a society went through them, the more resilient it eventually became.

There's been a lot of research about stress and here's the bad news: it's really bad for your body and your brain. Dr. Rajita Sinha imaged the brains of 100 participants and found that profoundly stressful events (not the normal, day-to-day kinds of stress) can actually shrink the part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex.

In addition, she and her team found that it’s not individual traumatic events that have the most impact, but the cumulative effect of a lifetime’s worth of stress that might cause the most dramatic changes in brain volume.

That area of the brain helps manage our emotions, impulse control, and personal interactions. Smaller brain volumes in these centers have also been linked to depression and other mood disorders such as anxiety.

Dr. Sinha said, “The brain is plastic, and there are ways to bring back and perhaps reverse some of the effects of stress and rescue the brain somewhat.” Relieving stress through exercise or meditation is an important way to diffuse some of the potentially harmful effects it can have on the brain. Maintaining strong social and emotional relationships can also help, to provide perspective on events of experiences that may be too overwhelming to handle on your own.

So, these overstressed individuals may not be able to "just get over it." They may need large amounts of love, patience, and prayer from their church community.

An article in The Wall Street Journal notes that “Some American soldiers returned from Afghanistan bearing scars or missing limbs. Others have wounds invisible to those around them, or even to themselves.”

The article highlights the story of Tyler Koller. Raised in a conservative Christian home, Koller joined the Army at the age of 18, and his first deployment was with Bravo Company. In his Army days, the fire in Koller’s belly was stoked by belief in his mission and faith in a just and loving God. He’d gather his squad to say a prayer before they stepped out of the wire to go on patrol, and he wouldn’t ever say a cuss word, even though his fellow troops used to offer him money to say the F-word out loud. “No way,” he’d say. It would be an affront to the Lord and to his mother, who raised him in the Pentecostal church.

Koller wasn’t physically broken in Afghanistan, but something did happen to him. Like many men and women who went to Iraq and Afghanistan in over 20 years of war, he suffered a moral injury. A soldier heads to a war zone with a carefully tuned moral compass that parents and preachers and teachers and friends have helped to calibrate.

But in a combat zone, soldiers see, hear, and do things that aren’t aligned with the true north of that moral compass. Koller saw horrible things in Afghanistan: the killing of American and Taliban soldiers but also the inadvertent maiming of children. He learned of bacha bazi, a slang term for the sexual abuse of young boys by corrupt Afghan policemen.

“The faith that I had went away,” Koller said, though “I have hope in my heart that there’s a higher being out there.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is a negative illustration, but it can raise questions around suffering or the problem of evil. What does your sermon text or biblical theme say about how to maintain your faith in the midst of suffering and evil?

Actress Angelina Jolie claims, “I don’t really have … a social life.” Instead, she admits, “I realized my closest friends are refugees. Maybe four out of six of the women that I am close to are from war and conflict.”

She explained what refugees have to offer that the shallowness of Hollywood does not offer:

There’s a reason people who have been through hardship are also much more honest and much more connected, and I am more relaxed with them. Why do I like spending time with people who’ve survived and are refugees? They’ve confronted so much in life that it brings forward not just strength, but humanity.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Angelina Jolie may not be a follower of Jesus, but she does have some biblical truth here—suffering can make us deeper and more compassionate people.

When Letitia Bishop ordered three Subway sandwiches at her local gas station, she probably expected a four-figure receipt – as long as the last two were after the decimal point. But that’s not at all what happened. After her purchase, she later checked her debit account and found a charge for $1,021.50.

After getting over the sticker shock of her purchase, Bishop said she tried contacting Subway’s corporate offices, but couldn’t get through to an actual human being. And when she went back to the store, she found that the store had been closed down.

It took seven weeks for her to get her money back, during which time she could barely pay for groceries and was forced to live off credit cards. Bishop said, “I had to make sacrifices during these two months. It was very difficult. I have never had to feel like we're going to have to get spaghetti, and that's going to be that.”

Bishop contacted a local news affiliate and filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau in Connecticut (where Subway’s corporate offices are located). That’s when a Subway representative put her in contact with a regional manager that owns the gas station and the Subway franchise. That regional manager opted to give Bishop cash back and made her sign a receipt.

But that wasn’t the end of her headache. Apparently, the irregularity of the large cash deposit caused her local bank to flag the transaction, which meant she couldn’t immediately use the funds to pay her bills, causing further grief for Bishop. She said, "I just honestly don't have the emotional space to deal with this because literally it's stressing me out so much.

Possible Preaching Angle

Mistakes are a part of life, but those who do not own up to them cause a lot of harm to the innocent when justice is delayed.

Texas pastor Tan Flippin was left thanking God, after a cycling accident in 2018 landed him in the hospital with fractures to his hip. His ride that eventful day, past a stretch undergoing repair, beside a subdivision, led to the crash that threw him off his bicycle. He said later, “I’d gone through that area before with no issues.”

When the doctors at the hospital ordered a CT scan to check for a concussion, what they discovered was shocking. They noticed a large malignant tumor on the front of Tan’s brain. That discovery began a long journey of treatment that eventually led to bone marrow and stem cell transplants. Today, he is cancer-free.

Flippin said, “God allowed the accident for my brain tumor to be found.”

The story has led to Flippin's testimony being shared on a regular basis. He said, "People want me to tell this story and that my faith has inspired them and been an encouragement. I hear that about every week.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Similarly, God can use the challenges and unpleasant situations we encounter to work out something good in our lives and to bring glory to his name. We can trust God to work out something meaningful through them (Phil. 1:12-18).

As a young adult, writer Andrew Leland was diagnosed with a rare disorder that caused him to become blind. In a New Yorker article, he notes that throughout history people have either bullied or coddled visually impaired people. But he gives an example of one school that empowers the blind by challenging them to achieve new heights of independence. Leland writes:

In 2020, I heard about a residential training school called the Colorado Center for the Blind, in Littleton. The C.C.B. is part of the National Federation of the Blind and is staffed almost entirely by blind people. Students live there for several months, wearing eye-covering shades and learning to navigate the world without sight. The N.F.B. takes a radical approach to cultivating blind independence. Students use power saws in a woodshop, take white-water-rafting trips, and go skiing. To graduate, they have to produce professional documents and cook a meal for sixty people.

The most notorious test is the “independent drop”: a student is driven in circles, and then dropped off at a mystery location in Denver, without a smartphone. (Sometimes, advanced students are left in the middle of a park, or the upper level of a parking garage.) Then the student has to find her way back to the Colorado Center, and she is allowed to ask one person one question along the way. A member of an R.P. support group told me, “People come back from those programs loaded for bear”—ready to hunt the big game of blindness. Katie Carmack, a social worker with R.P., told me, of her time there, “It was an epiphany.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, our heavenly Father will stretch us by “dropping” us into challenging situations.

Add-on fees are driving consumers crazy. From restaurants and hotels to concerts and food delivery, we are increasingly shown a low price online, only to click through and find a range of fees that yield a much higher price at checkout.

The term drip pricing was popularized by a 2012 Federal Trade Commission conference. Its spread is associated with the proliferation of airline fees after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Yet an example of the phenomenon that long predates 2001 is stores’ practice of listing goods without the sales tax, which gets added at checkout.

Why not include the sales tax with the sticker price? One study from 2019 showed consumers punish that sort of transparency. A grocery store let the authors tag some products with the familiar pretax price and some with the total price including tax. For example, a hair brush’s price tag showed $5.79 before tax, and beneath that $6.22 with the tax. Sales volume dropped for products with price tags that included the tax than a control group without the tax.

This isn’t because shoppers didn’t know the tax rate or which items were taxable. In fact, 75% of shoppers surveyed knew the sales tax within 0.5 percentage point, and most knew what goods were taxable. So, the tax-inclusive price tag didn’t give them new information; it was just that transparent reminders turned some people off.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Jesus never practiced “drip pricing.” He never hid the total costs for following him. It may turn some people off, but he always put the full cost upfront.

In his memoir, Everything Sad Is Untrue, Daniel Nayeri tells the gripping story of his mother’s conversion from a devout Muslim background to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. She gave up wealth and social status, eventually being forced to flee from Iran under a death threat. But she was willing to pay the price. Nayeri writes about one example of her costly faith:

One time she hung a little cross necklace from the rearview mirror of her car, which was probably a reckless thing to do. ... My mom was like that. One day after work, she went to her car, and there was a note stuck to the windshield. It said, “Madame Doctor, if we see this cross again, we will kill you.”

To my dad, [who is not a Christian], this is the kind of story that proves his point. That my mom was picking a fight. That she could’ve lived quietly and saved everyone the heartaches that would come. If she had kept her head down. If she stopped telling people. If she pretended just a few holidays a year, that nothing had changed. She could still have everything.

My mom took the cross down that day. Then she got a cross so big it blocked half the windshield, and she put it up. Why would anybody live with their head down? Besides, the only way to stop believing something is to deny it yourself. To hide it. To act as if it hasn’t changed your life.

Another way to say it is that everybody is dying and going to die of something. And if you’re not spending your life on the stuff you believe, then what are you even doing? What is the point of the whole thing? It’s a tough question, because most people haven’t picked anything worthwhile.

Tom Hallman, Jr., a reporter for The Oregonian, recently chronicled a young man’s turnaround in the daily newspaper, highlighting the pivotal nature of a judge’s leniency.

For De'Onn Wooden, a series of unpaid traffic infractions led to a warrant for his arrest as a young man in the early 90s. According to Wooden, the judge was ready to sentence him to prison, but his pastor advocated for his behalf. He testified before the judge that Wooden had turned his life around since the initial infractions. Because of the pastor’s passionate advocacy, the judge relented, suspending the warrant, reducing his fine, and putting him on a payment plan.

Growing up in the violence-plagued streets of Compton, California, Wooden's prospects were grim. Gang shootings were a nightly threat, and survival was a daily struggle. However, a move to Perris, California, provided a glimmer of hope, leading to an education in drafting. Venturing to the Pacific Northwest at 20, he faced racial discrimination but persevered, eventually settling in Northeast Portland.

Now, 30 years later, Wooden is on the verge of realizing his dream: launching an electrical-services company, with a vision to extend opportunities to women and minorities who have faced life's challenges and seek a fresh start. As he prepares to start his own business, he plans to pay it forward by offering apprenticeships to underrepresented individuals, showing that hard work and determination can conquer life's obstacles.

Possible Preaching Angle:

When God’s people show mercy to those who don't deserve it, we reflect God's heart for all people.

Pop R&B duo Hall & Oates, hitmakers in the late 70s and early 80s, made their unlikely team-up thanks to a series of unfortunate setbacks, one of which involved an incident of gun violence.

Daryl Hall and John Oates both grew up in suburban Philadelphia and attended Temple University. Hall studied music while Oates majored in journalism, but both remained involved in musical groups during their teenage years. Hall was with a group called the Temptones; Oates was part of The Masters.

In 1967, both groups were invited to play a dance at the Adelphi Ballroom. It was sponsored by radio disc jockey Jerry Bishop, who promised airtime to the groups who played. Oates later said in an interview, “When Jerry Bishop contacted you, you had to go. If you didn’t, your record wouldn’t get played on the radio.”

Daryl and John were at the Adelphi at the same time, but didn’t meet each other until a fracas broke out before the show started. “We were all getting ready for the show to start when we heard screams—and then gunshots,” Oates said in 2016. “It seemed a full-scale riot had erupted out in the theater, not a shocker given the times. Philly was a city where racial tensions had begun to boil over.”

The show was canceled, but because the show was happening on an upper floor, the only way out for the musicians was to take a small service elevator. Daryl and John ended up standing next to each other, striking up a nervous conversation. Hall remembers saying, “Oh, well, you didn’t get to go on, either. How ya doin’?”

By the time they met each other again on campus to reminisce on their brush with tragedy, Oates’ group had been disbanded, so he joined the Temptones as a guitarist. Then later, after the Temptones disbanded, they continued their musical friendship as roommates.

But their partnership didn’t truly solidify until Oates returned from a trip to Europe and found himself in dire need of shelter. With nowhere else to go, John showed up to crash at Daryl’s house. And the rest is history. Oates said, “That was our true birth as a duo.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even when we don't get what we want, God knows how to use any circumstance to bring us one step closer to our destiny in his will.

In an article in Vice, Brian Merchant argues that the first structure that humans will probably build on the Moon after they have completed building a base there will be a church. Indeed, Christian missionaries and clergymen have built churches in the harshest of climates, whether they be the tropical jungles of Africa or the sun-drenched deserts of Australia.

When the Ross Sea Party of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917 landed in Antarctica, among the men was an Anglican priest named Arnold Spencer-Smith. Spencer-Smith set up a small chapel in a dark room in Scott's Hut at Cape Evans. He built an altar with a cross and candlesticks and an aumbry where he reserved the Blessed Sacrament.

Today, there are eight churches in Antarctica. One is an Eastern Orthodox church built of wood in the Russian style. Another is The Chapel of Our Lady of the Snows which is a Catholic church located in a cave in the ice. It is the most southern place of worship of any religion in the world.

Churches have been erected in Antarctica since the 1950s. Extended stays in the region can be an extremely stressful experience for the researchers who often stay separated from their families for months at a time, which is one of the reasons why churches exist in this remote continent.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Living anywhere in the world (or space) is a stressful experience for believers. We need the church to give support, care, connectivity to others, and to center ourselves in worship of Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth.

Many of the world’s greatest souls became their best selves not in spite of but because of their distress. The great hymn writer Cowper wrote hopeful hymns and the great artist Van Gogh brushed epic paintings while contemplating suicide. Charles Spurgeon preached some of his best sermons while depressed. Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and Martin Luther King Jr. battled melancholy. The great composer Beethoven went deaf. C.S. Lewis buried his wife after a short, cancer-ridden marriage. Elie Wiesel and Corrie Ten Boom survived the holocaust. Joni Eareckson Tada lost her ability to walk in a tragic accident. John Perkins endured jail, beatings, and death threats from white supremacists.

As grief expert Elizabeth Kubler Ross famously noted, “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known one defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation and sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep love and concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”