Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Monday November 24, 2008

The other day I read about a young woman who lived in a cloister from the time she was 3 years old and escaped when she was young woman. A merchant had helped her and 11 other nuns in the escape buy hiding them in empty fish barrels. Her given name was Katharina von Bora.

A few years after Katharina's escape, she married, gave birth to 6 children, 4 of whom lived to adult hood, and she and her husband adopted 4 more children. Your modern too busy for children mom, she was not. Her husband affectionately called her "my Katie." He told friends, "My Katie is in all things so obliging and pleasing to me that I would not exchange my poverty for all the riches of Croesus." May I refresh your memory by reminding you that Croesus was richer than Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Larry Lilly combined.

Katie was called the "Morning Star" because she arose each morning at 4 and took care of milking cows, tending the children and numerous other chores of the house in which as many as 30 guests at a time were spending the night, a week or even months.

Near the end of her life Katharina wrote of the troubles, the pain of burying two of her children, the warlike man she had married with this statement:

"I would never have known the meaning of the various psalms, come to appreciate certain difficulties or known the inner workings of the soul; I would never had understood the practice of the Christian and work, if God had never brought afflictions to my life."

It is unlikely that you will stumble across a reference to Katharina von Bora in your reading as she is seldom mentioned by her maiden name. The number of references to her by her married name pays her nowhere near her due. Yet for centuries Katharina von Bora was held to be the benchmark of virtuous womanhood.

Katharina von Bora, raised as a cloistered nun, escaped as teen, married her famous husband while still but a teen after his friends put enormous pressure on him to marry her, Katharina became known as Mrs. Martin Luther.

I was deeply moved by her testimony of how the Lord had used her many struggles to grow her spiritually, and how she thanked God for the struggles that made her life richer on the inside.

In what is called Post Modern Christendom, we discount any sort of suffering as some sign that we are not "good Christians" we would do well to read again the Bible and reject much of what passes for life teaching as it denies the role of pain, suffering, and poverty and in the life Christian. Afflictions that we complain about may be the catalyst the Lord is using to "grow" us into usable servants.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2008 Use with Credit

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