Friday, October 5, 2001
Friday, October 5, 2001
He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in
weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of
Christ may
dwell in me.
Kornfield felt a great inner freedom. He had a patient, a cancer patient, who was
awaiting surgery.
Kornfield shared with him what Christ had done in his own life. Kornfield was so
enthusiastic
about this change in his own life, that he caught the patient's attention in spite of his
brief lapses
brought on by the medicine. Late into the night, the doctor stayed with his patient,
sharing with
him the unsearchable riches of Christ. Later that night someone slipped into the
doctor's quarters
and brutally bludgeoned him to death. From a human standpoint that should be the end
of the
story, but, it is not.
The patient recovered from his surgery, but he was a changed man. Because of
Kornfield's
testimony, he became a Christian--and what a Christian he became. His
name--Alexander
Solzhenitszyn. Boris Kornfield, in his weakness--in a prison, testifying to a cancer
patient
semi-conscious from anesthesia only hours before himself being killed--could not know
that he
was touching someone who within a couple of decades would become one of the
world's most
influential voices for Christ. God is glorified in our weakness.
(2 Corinthians 12:9
NRSV)
In his book, LOVING GOD, Charles Colson gives a powerful example of human
weakness and
divine power. He tells about a Russian Jewish doctor by the name of Boris
Nicholayevich
Kornfield, a Russian Jewish doctor who was sentenced to a most inhuman Russian
prison for a
political crime in the 1950s. Because he was a physician he did receive some
privileges in the
prison in return for treating other prisoners. Still he suffered much abuse. His treatment
would
have in fact been unbearable except that he developed a friendship with another
prisoner who
through the quality of his witness brought Kornfield to a Christian commitment.
Lord Jesus, in my weakness may you be lifted up. Amen.
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