“I guarantee that you will encounter difficult times in your relationship with Yah, blessed be His Name.  The trust of some will waver in the midst of tests.  Do not be one of those who waver because life becomes difficult or because the elder or congregation disappoints or betrays you.  Do not give up the greatest and hardest relationship because you lose someone dear to you.  Do not lose trust because you have unanswered questions or because you may not understand.  Do not lose heart because you feel alone.  Do not give up the good fight because you want to die, persecution endangers and harms your life, or for any other reason.  Shun the rocky soil.  Instead grow deep roots into the Lord through relationship with Him that is nurtured in daily prayer, meditation, fasting, fellowship, service, purpose…and focus and endurance.

My children, continue the struggle to draw near to the Lord even if you do not hear His voice.  Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, more widely known as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, did not hear from God for sixty years, yet she maintained faithfulness, enduring trust, in Him.  Questions and doubts may arise - endure anyway.  Challenges in your life and in your walk with God will come - persist anyway.  

If you stand firm, persecution will come, but please never give up, never quit… do not allow bitterness to corrupt your heart.  Seek Him for comfort, for purpose, and for answers.  Even if you do not receive a response, sustain in your walk with the Lord.  No matter how difficult the Way, the struggle, the fight, the race, may be…persevere.  Trust Him.  Trust Him for salvation and Life.  Know that persecution and pain will come if you stand with His Anointed One (Revelation 2:9-10), but He will be there to help you every step of the way (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).  He will be with you even if the test means the death of your body.”

~R. H. Ben-Shalom, Papa’s Last Words: They Lied About God

(Art: Burning Bush Byzantine mosaic 6th Century St Catherine’s Monastery. Sinai)

1247/2000

JLPT: N1

School Grade: Junior high school

This character is a combination of 而 and yet/but/however and 寸 measure/hand. 而 itself developed from the image of a beard, and here is being used to express that meaning. 寸 here means “careful use of the hand.” 耐 is a pictograph that referred to “shaving off a beard,” which was a minor punishment (the next level up was shaving the hair). This in turn symbolized something that was  “not too bad” and “bearable.”

“Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole lifetime, it would still be incomplete. Perhaps, in this insatiable need for perpetuation, we should better understand human suffering, if we knew that it was eternal. It appears that great minds are, sometimes, less horrified by suffering than by the fact that it does not endure. In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day. One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness.”

- Albert Camus. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, 1951.

Art: Edward Hopper. Boy and Moon, 1906-1907.

Stefan Zweig, Montaigne