Quotes About Suffering

Our trials are supposed to turn us toward God, but we whine and complain and wish someone would turn down the fire so we could have our old life back the way it was.

Sometimes when people work for God, they get the idea that He should make their life all smooth and easy because they're doing His work...It ain't so. Jesus said life is gonna be hard. Period. He said if you're gonna follow Him, then you're gonna carry a cross, just like He did. this world of ours is under a curse, honey. We need to expect things to be bad. But even if we lose everything, we still have Jesus.

All kindness goes out the window when you put a metal collar around the neck of another person. Those poor broken souls with the scars of bondage still showing didn't look as if they'd been overwhelmed with kindness.

Yet even as Beatrice tried to convince herself that her anguish varied greatly from the disappointments the beautiful widow had endured, she recognized the act as a futile attempt to elevate her own suffering to something greater. She wanted to believe her sorrow transcended ordinary misery, that it was in some way hallowed, but in reality it was just sadness, as common as dirt and as familiar as the sky.

Without hope, people become desperate to escape the pain. They seldom see the rhythms in their own lives, how dark phases come before new beginnings.

She had had such an unhappy childhood and she had only to picture some poor child suffering in a similar way for her heart to sink. Of course, she knew that she would never punish her child for poor academic performance. She would not comment on her child's lack of good looks either. Nor would she ever tell her son or daughter as her mother had once told her that she was only staying in a bad, destructive relationship for their sake.

My head aches, my eyes burn, my arms and legs have given up, and my face in the mirror has a grayish cast. The bed, across the room, calls in its unmistakable lover's croon, Come to me, come, only I can make you truly happy, oh, how happy I'll make you, don't resist, remember how you moan with pleasure the instant we touch.....

Parables, yes. We here are to lead life with woe. Tasting bitter.

Nothing is as horrendous as imagining the times of happiness from an environment which is that of hell.

How did she do it, I'd always wondered. Dancing with Q., I understood. Once in a while the pain falls asleep on the job, and the experienced sufferer knows enough to seize such moments swiftly and without thought - for when we realize we're actually dancing, the jolt of joy wakens the pain. Laura Acosta

Your face is marked with lines of life, put there by love and laughter, suffering and tears. It's beautiful.

These seasons of suffering are not for nothing. They will grow you. They will shape you. They will soften you. They will allow you to experience God's comfort and compassion. But you will find life-giving purpose and meaning when you allow God to take your painful experiences and comfort others. You will be able to share a unique hope because you know exactly what it feels like to be them.

God doesn't want you or me to suffer. But He will allow it in doses to increase our trust. Our pain and suffering isn't to hurt us. It's to save us. To save us from a life where we are self-reliant, self-satisfied, self -absorbed, and set up for the greatest pain of all . . . separation from God.

Brokenness to redemption, where mercy and grace kiss both sides of our face. Brokenness where we are split open. Redemption where God knits us back together. Mercy when we don't get the punishment we do deserve. Grace when we get the lavish love gifts we don't deserve. So here we are.

We all desperately want something that we see the Lord giving to other women. We see Him blessing them in the very areas He's withholding from us. And while these other women may not be obnoxious like Peninnah in their reminders of their blessing and our lack, it's increasingly painful each time we see a reminder. We look at them, and we feel set aside.

Numbing the pain never goes to the source of the real issue to make us healthier. It only silences our screaming need for help.

Life doesn't add up. People don't add up. And in the rawest moments of honest hurting, God doesn't add up. All of which makes us hold our trust ever so close to our chests until it becomes more tied to our fears than to our faith.

when you are chosen for suffering, you are chosen for the blessing of displaying the works of God

The roots of this friendship that once nourished me in deep places now ache with a barren flow. The conversations and connections have been hollowed out and replaced with a stabbing throb of a pierced soul. The arrow dug deep.

His pain in the garden became power in the tomb! His crucifixion on the cross became the defeat of death. His broken body became the resurrection hope for the world.

If we place our hope and future in the hands of our unchanging, unflinching God who never leaves us or forsakes us, we'll find healing and freedom. We'll be able to see something on the other side of all the pain. Something good. Something we know will be so wroth whatever it takes to get well. So instead of running from the pain, we embrace it as necessary. We must feel pain to heal the pain. If we never allow ourselves to feel it, we won't acknowledge it's there.

People laughed at Jesus. People rejected Jesus. People misunderstood Jesus. We know this in theory, but as I sat on that rock that day, I suddenly realized what an everyday reality this was for Him. And because this was a reality for Him, He is the perfect one to turn to when rejection is a reality for us.

Make no mistake: being lulled into a false sense of security is worse than going through the process of suffering.

C. S. Lewis said it best: "We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."1