FOX broadcaster John Roberts has malaria

Before I left Texas for East Malaysia as a college missionary, I took medication to protect against malaria. From then to now, that was the only time the disease has been personally relevant to me.

Then I saw this post by FOX broadcaster John Roberts on X:

Thank you to Trace for jumping into the chair today!
I somehow came down with a severe case of Malaria.
I can honestly say that I am the only person in the hospital with Malaria.
In fact, one of my doctors said I’m the first case he has ever seen.

Mr. Roberts doesn’t say how he contracted the disease, though we know it is spread to humans through the bites of infected mosquitoes. While rare in the US, the Mayo Clinic reports that it is common in tropical and subtropical countries. In fact, nearly 290 million people each year are infected with malaria, and more than 400,000 die of the disease.

If you live in America, you are not at high risk. Our country sees about 2,000 to 2,500 malaria cases each year, but nearly all are linked to travel in malaria-endemic areas.

But this makes us no less mortal, a fact that is resonating with me today for a very personal reason.

Reflections on my mother’s birthday

My mother was born on this day in 1928. She grew up in a small town in Kansas, where she became the first female to graduate from her university with a master’s degree in business. She still holds the state record for speed typing on a manual typewriter (an achievement that will never be surpassed, for obvious reasons).

Mom was eventually transferred to Houston, Texas, where she met my father on a blind date. They were married in 1957 and had me the next year. Two years later, my father suffered a severe heart attack. He lived for nineteen years on what his doctors called “borrowed time” before suffering another heart attack in 1979 and dying at the age of fifty-five.

As a result of his condition, while my father worked in our family business when his health permitted, my mother ran the company. After his death, she became a realtor and then a tax preparer. She had numerous health issues, including a debilitating back condition, and struggled with cancer for the last several years of her life before dying in 2008 at the age of eighty.

And yet I never heard her complain. Not once.

Not about my father’s heart attack and limitations, or his early death, or her physical challenges. I spent the day with her before she fell into a coma and died the next day. She spent the time telling me more about her personal life than I had ever known, including her father’s accidental death when she was a teenage girl, the bike accident that nearly paralyzed her and led to her back issues, and her family’s financial struggles growing up.

And yet, not once did she complain about any of it. All the years I knew her, she was courageous and resolute, always believing that her role was to make the best of her circumstances, whatever they might be.

“Godliness with contentment is great gain”

Paul would have agreed with my mother. He assured Timothy, “Godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6). This was not because his life was easy. The opposite was in fact the case, as the apostle reported:

Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure (2 Corinthians 11:24–27).

And yet he testified to the Philippians, “I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content” (Philippians 4:11).

Scripture consistently teaches that perseverance is essential to experiencing God’s best:

• “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him” (James 1:12).
• “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).
• “You have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised” (Hebrews 10:36).
• “Do not grow weary in doing good” (2 Thessalonians 3:13).

Why is perseverance so vital to God’s provision?

“Though the fig tree should not blossom”

One obvious reason is that God cannot give what we will not receive. He honors the freedom with which he creates us and will not force his will on us. Jesus told the Laodicean church, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). Note that this was addressed not to lost people but to Christians.

If we give up on God in the face of pain, we cannot experience the strength he gives those who trust fully in him (cf. Philippians 4:13). This is one way the Enemy seeks to use the issue of innocent suffering: not only to keep the lost from salvation, but to keep the saved from God’s provision. If he can tempt us to turn from our Lord when we most need to turn to him, he can keep us from the transforming power that glorifies our Lord and draws others to him.

So, across decades of theological study and apologetics ministry, I have learned in an academic context what I first learned from my mother: perseverance is vital to God’s best. It is when suffering tempts me to reject my Father that I most need my Father. And it is when I trust him despite my challenges that my faith is most relevant and attractive to the secular world.

Mom would have wholeheartedly agreed with the prophet:

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lᴏʀᴅ; I will take joy in the God of my salvation (Habakkuk 3:17–18).

As a result of such faith, Habakkuk could testify, “Gᴏᴅ, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places” (v. 19).

Why do you need such “strength” today?