Why don’t you commit suicide?

A question Vicktor Frankl would ask his tormented patients seeking psychological help. He would ascertain from their answer the reasons for their disturbed emotional and mental condition. He believed that if a patient could find meaning in whatever situation they faced they would be on the road to recovery.

Viktor Frankl having spent three years at Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps had learnt that even in the worst of humanitarian situations one could find meaning and redemption. The freedom you have to choose meaning for your life is the one freedom that cannot be taken from you. You could almost divided the camps into two kinds of inmates, those who lost hope and soon perished and those who chose to believe that their life had significance no matter how small and insignificance and survived their fate. It is not what life offers us that is important, for this is up the one day and down the next. It is more to do with what we can offer life and work within this greater and higher meaning of life.

May we strive to find meaning in everything we do this day.

A good place to start understanding Frankl's work is to read his book: "Man's search for meaning."

'Companions in Christ' - A winner programme

We have run the first part of this programme in three of our Fellowship Groups so far.
It is a wonderful experiential way of engaging the Christian faith in a small group. The content is excellent, the methodology is taken from years of Christian history and the theology is particularly Wesleyan. The group in the picture just finished sharing their life journey through the eyes of prevenient, justifying and sanctifying grace. They also looked at the life journey's of people like St. Augustine, Martin Luther, Mother Theresa and Evelyn Underhill as examples of different ways we experience the grace of God.

It was a privilege to hear the narratives of each persons spiritual journey and to listen to the pain and hardship many had faced. let me close by quoting from the preface of a book I have just started reading, "Man's search for meaning" by Viktor Frankl:

"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying."