One of the most influential preachers and religious leader of the 20th century was the minister of the Riverside Church in New York, Harry Emerson Fosdick.In his autobiography, Dr. Fosdick tells of an experience that happened to him soon after his graduation from Theological Seminary. He wrote –
“In my young manhood I had a critical nervous breakdown. It was the most terrifying wilderness I ever travelled through. I dreadfully wanted to commit suicide, but instead I made some of the most vital discoveries of my life.”
“My little book, The Meaning of Prayer would never have been written without that experience. I found God in a desert.”
It is interesting to recognize that some of life’s most revealing insights come to us, not from life’s loveliness, but from life’s difficulties?
Geoff Pound
Image: Harry Emerson Fosdick