Quotes About Suffering

In a sense, Job must replay the original test of the garden of Eden, with the bar raised higher. Living in paradise, Adam and Eve faced a best-case scenario for trusting God, who asked so little of them and showered down blessings. In a living hell, Job faces the worst-case scenario: God asks so much, while curses rain down on him.

Knowledge is passive, intellectual; suffering is active, personal. No intellectual answer will solve suffering. Perhaps this is why God sent his own Son as one response to human pain, to experience it and absorb it into himself.

Think too of all who suffer as if you shared their pain. HEBREWS 13:3

The role of the doctor, nurse, social worker, minister, or loving friend is simply this: to keep the nutcracker of circumstances from destroying, and to help the sufferer see that even the worst hardships open up the potential for growth and development.

Those who suffer rest their security not on things, which often cannot be enjoyed and may soon be taken away, but rather on people.

Those who suffer can respond to the call of the gospel with a certain abandonment and uncomplicated totality because they have so little to lose and are ready for anything.

One of the most important things we can do for a suffering person is to restore a sense of meaning or significance to the experience.

persons with AIDS, and they hear a very clear message from the church: "You get no sympathy from me. You deserve your suffering as God's punishment. Keep away." I cannot think of a more terrifying disease than AIDS, or one that provokes a less compassionate response.

The first step in helping a suffering person (or in accepting our own pain) is to acknowledge that pain is valid, and worthy of a sympathetic response.

Faith like Job's cannot be shaken because it is the result of having been shaken.

En nuestro interior existe una especie de juicio instintivo, según el cual la vida debería ser justa, y de alguna manera, Dios debería estar «haciendo mejor su trabajo" de gobernar este mundo.

God weeps with us so that we may one day laugh with him. JÜRGEN MOLTMANN

He transforms pain, using it to teach and strengthen us, if we allow it to turn us toward him.

si alguna vez me llego a preguntar cuál será la respuesta «espiritual" adecuada al dolor y el sufrimiento, puedo observar cómo reaccionó Jesús ante sus propios sufrimientos: con temor y temblor, con gritos y lágrimas.

conviction that God is good and that everything

suffering can serve as instruments to teach us the value of dependence, and unless we learn dependence we will never experience grace. The apostle Paul gave the Corinthians an

The medical community now freely admits that in a larger sense a person's attitude is one of the chief factors in determining the effect of all suffering.

the same answer from suffering people: it matters little what we say — our concern and availability matter far more.

Viktor Frankl, who spent time in one of Hitler's camps, said, "Despair is suffering without meaning.

Faith like Job's cannot be shaken because it is the result of having been shaken." C.

God's grace is not a grandfatherly display of "niceness," for it cost the exorbitant price of Calvary.

Pain allows us, the fortunate ones at least, to lead free and active lives. If you ever doubt that, visit a leprosarium and observe for yourself a world without pain.

Where is God when it hurts? I have often asked. The answer is another question, Where is the church when it hurts?

That this world spoiled by evil and suffering still exists at all is an example of God's mercy, not his cruelty.