Yet, he has one person in his life, perhaps two, who may be reliably trusted. He has some sense of love within the bounds of tyranny that enfold his life. They show him hope.

For this reason, despite his want to give up when things are especially tough, he finds reason to go on.

THE GOSPEL'S POWER MADE RELEVANT

You have to admire any person, who through their instinct for resilience, will continue on despite many harsh, little and large, rejections. For, in this is the gospel's power.

Salvation's day is power in the hour of need.

Out the jaws of humiliation is reprieve unto exultation, for the Lord takes great issue with the scouring aggression of those moral weaklings whom abuse an easy target in the presence of palpable encouragement.

Sympathy of the Spirit may be known. Anyone who bears under the strain of the domination of evil - with some invisible knowledge of hope, one that expresses itself in faith for actually no reason but the resolve to hold on - may feel the rising tide of peace within. God will never leave him nor forsake him.

The gospel is built as a buckle for the belt of persecution. No wonder the kindly, docile world - asleep to any sense of suffering - needs, and identifies with, little of it.

OUR VISION BEYOND THE REJECTIONS

Hope is such an essential ingredient within the overall scope of the circumstance of the bullied. If they have even one reason to hope, just one person to instil love and a sense of confidence, they can endure almost anything. Indeed, the very trials they endure will convert within them an inimitable power for good that will serve them all the days of their ever-blossoming lives.

As we count up the several rejections as they occur minute by minute, accumulating in countless proportion day by day, even these are not enough to crush the spirit of the person with vision beyond those rejections.

The power of God is a miracle for the socially destitute; for, the person isolated and ridiculed by their peers has hope in proportion to even a moment's vision of the love that supports them. A pinch of love sustains hope in a world of pain.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Steve Wickham is a Registered Safety Practitioner (BSc, FSIA, RSP[Australia]) and a qualified, unordained Christian minister (GradDipBib&Min). His blogs are at: http://epitemnein-epitomic.blogspot.com/ and http://inspiringbetterlife.blogspot.com/

By Steve Wickham