Quotes from Thabiti Anyabwile

If we allow ourselves even for a moment to contemplate the vast weight of suffering in the world, we will easily be overwhelmed with grief. This is why we develop the habit and self-protective instinct of overlooking the suffering around us.

Sometimes God comforts us directly, but that's not His only strategy. Normally He comforts us through His people—so if our lives aren't open to one another, they're closed to the Father's comfort. Let's share our lives; let's fellowship in suffering so that we can fellowship in His mercy.

We do some of our best work in evangelism when we make sure people understand the wrath of God against them, that their plight is desperate because God is angry. The problem of unreached and unengaged peoples is not that they don't have the gospel - that's the solution. Their plight is that they face a God who is rightly angry with them because of their sin. ("Cross", p. 35)

Where is God in suffering? He's in it with us, and in it for us:

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