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CHRIST IN OUR SUFFERING:
By Mark Davis Pickup
Addresses and interactive workshops are available via Zoom, Skype, etc.
A new way to have guest speakers
What are Christians to make of suffering? After sin has been confessed, and suffering continues, what then? C.S. Lewis said:
“Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God, or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren’t.”[2]
Mark Davis Pickup has suffered from aggressive multiple sclerosis (MS) for close to 40 years. The disease took him from being a healthy and able-bodied man to chronically ill and disabled. Weeks, months, and even years of convalescence gave him time to prayerfully reflect and seek to understand God’s purposes in his anguish. He knows Christ’s love and knows God is good. There must have been meaning or purpose to Mark’s protracted suffering. There is, and he reveals it in his new live online presentation available through video conferencing platforms such as Zoom. Mark has stopped travelling.
For more than 25 years Mark spoke extensively across the United States and Canada promoting the sanctity, dignity and equality of all human life, and against assisted suicide & euthanasia. He has spoken widely about the natural human dignity that is ours in Christ. Mark is available to address your group, your conferences, churches or community outreach about finding Christ in our Suffering via conferencing platforms.
He addressed politicians and legislative committees (both Canadian and American), university forums, hospital medical staffs, religious and denominational leaders, community groups and organizations about the importance of Life and disability issues, and a Christian perspective on suffering. In the wake of Canada and 10 U.S. states and the District of Columbia legalizing assisted suicide, Mark continues to speak out about the sanctity of human life and building a culture of Life—and life-affirming responses—in our culture of death and despair. He is available to address your next conference or event.[3] Mark gave the keynote addresses to the U.S. National Right to Life Prayer Breakfasts in 2001, 2005, and jointly with his wife LaRee in 2010.
In 2018, God did a wonderful thing for Mark and answered Yes to his prayer: After more than 15 years of paralysis (triplegia) and dependent on an electric wheelchair, he regained the use of his atrophied legs, compromised right arm and useless hand. He’s walking! His right arm and hand are fully restored! In the aftermath of decades of horrible, slow creeping paralysis, Mark has a fresh perspective of those stormy years and calamitous times. Like the crisp clean smell in the air after a violent thunderstorm, it has become evident that Christ was always there even in the darkest times when the tempest’s black clouds darkened the world, and terrifying thunderclaps muffled that still small voice. CHRIST IN OUR SUFFERING speaks to the grief of adult-acquired disability and disease, both for the individual and those who love them. CHRIST IN OUR SUFFERING speaks to finding meaning in anguish.
CONTACT: HumanLifeMatters@shaw.ca
Why consider conferencing live speeches, sermons, workshops, or other presentations with Mark Davis Pickup?
- Precisely because they are live and in real-time.
- Conferencing allows Mark to speak anywhere in the world.
- Expense: Hosting organizations or churches are not faced with flight costs and travel-associated costs.
- They are interactive, allowing for Q&As and discussions.
“Mark Davis Pickup has lectured so widely here in the U.S. that a lot of people know him and have tremendous respect for him.”— Dr. Dianne Irving, former career-appointed bench research biochemist/biologist (NIH, NCI, Bethesda, MD), an M.A. and Ph.D. philosopher (Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.), and professor of the History of Philosophy and of Medical Ethics.
“I met Mark Pickup in the early 1990s, and we became good friends. When I met him, he could barely walk using two canes because of his progressive MS. Over time, I observed his physical condition worsen, to the point he became triplegic, that is, was only able to use his left arm. He had no use of his legs whatsoever. I am convinced that Mark’s dramatic improvement is a miracle. What else could explain a man in the later stages of MS being able to walk again and ride a bicycle? Mark is a very prayerful Christian, and I believe his faith was answered as a sign for the world.
Wesley J Smith
Host, Humanize Podcast https://humanize.today
Chair, Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism
Washington, D.C.
[1] Photos: Top left Mark Davis Pickup speaking at a fund-raising banquet for a Christian hospice, Lansing, Michigan. Photo right: Mark being interviewed by Canadian national Christian TV program about a miracle God gave him to walk again after 16 years in an electric wheelchair and paralysed.
[2] C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, (New York, Bantam Books, 1980), p. 50.
[3] Venues should have a large screen. Workshops should be interactive for Q&A
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