thoughts and ruminations while in exile (1 Pet. 2:11)

Alexander Solzhenitsyn died yesterday from complications due to heart disease. If you have never heard about him or read about his life I would encourage you to do so. I'll never forget reading his speech "A World Split Apart" delivered at Harvard in 1978. In that speech he made this observation:

"Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness -- in the morally inferior sense of the word which has come into being during those same decades. In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to attain them imprint many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings. Active and tense competition fills all human thoughts without opening a way to free spiritual development."

If you have not read this speech, I would highly recommend. We in the United States often do not realize how other countries see us.

He was a Christian man who suffered heavily under the communistic regime in Russia. I pray his life will be an encouragement to you. Read what Al Mohler and John Piper had to say about him.