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Why does God allow suffering? It is a theme that we encounter daily in healthcare and one of the hardest questions we face when sharing our faith. This book is part of a series by an American physician, exploring some key attributes of God. Starting with the basics, we are reminded...
We listen to the oncologist's verdict. 'Blood cancer - leukaemia.' Immediately we grasp the implications. Eight to nine months' treatment…mother to stay in hospital, too…chemotherapy …radiation…75% survival. Why, Lord, why our child? Is this punishment? And if so, do we deserve it? Yet we believe the statement of Jesus (Luke...
A woman lies in a hospital bed. The cancer that started in her breast has spread. Her vertebrae and bones are now riddled with disease and she requires high doses of pain killing drugs to numb her senses. Her threeyear- old daughter stands silently, gently holding Mummy's hand – confused...
A Christian psychiatrist and journalist here explore the nature of grief after death or divorce, offering telling personal histories to illustrate their points together with practical wisdom and spiritual consolation. The authors remind us how grief is the other side of love. Its duration matters less than its direction, which...
In a single day Laura's world fell apart. Until last week, life couldn't have been better. She was in the prime of her life, very happily married with two children aged six and two. The only warning she had was a slight visual disturbance. She thought she ought to ask...
Post-traumatic stress disorder can follow rape, assault or major life-threatening accident or illness. It also occurs after seeing shattering incidents happen to others, especially when the person is called upon to help the victims: examples are serious train or air accidents and events such as the football disaster at Hillsborough. ...
'Since coming here,' said the prisoner, 'I've come much closer to God.' Opal's quiet words were convincing. In turn, she was touched to learn that opal gemstones owe their beauty to immense pressure, bearing down on fragments of silica in water. This pressure produces their scintillating colours and makes them...
Is there an affinity between our drive for knowledge and expertise and the feeling of let-down, even of guilt, when, despite one's best compassionate efforts, someone we have cared for dies? Is there something within the human psyche which desires to be divine and is sometimes cripplingly disappointed when it...
My justification for daring to write on this subject is that, having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) 13 years ago, I have some experience of what it's like to be on both sides of the fence. For young doctors, it is usually only in our patients that we confront...
As doctors we are exposed to suffering in a unique way. For us, it is not something that just happens on a television screen to people we neither know nor meet. We grapple with it in our patients each day. Unless we want to insulate ourselves by becoming cynical and...
