In all my reading of Bunyan, what has gripped me most is his sufering and how he responded to it—what it made of him, and what it might make of us. All of us come to our tasks with a history and many predispositions. I come to John Bunyan with a growing sense that sufering is a normal, useful, essential, and God-ordained element in Christian life and ministry—not only for the sake of weanin…