Editorial September 10, 1990 Issue

More than just surviving

Michael D. Rissler

How do people survive challenges that almost break their will to live? It's a question that is not far from the lives of more people than we may realize.

A man was a prisoner of war for eight years. Separated from his family, his country, and his freedom, he lived under the constant threat of torture. And the torture came—many times. One of the things, he said, that sustained him was the story of Job in the Bible. The cruelty around this prisoner of war could not blind him to a spirituality that gave him strength to endure and, eventually, to regain freedom.

In another instance, a woman agonized about things that her adult children were going through, things that to a mother are heart-rending. She was compelled to go beyond old images of her children as they were when they were very young and dependent. She, along with her children, discovered through prayer new capacities that were equal to these new challenges.

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