Quotes About Suffering

I told a story earlier from Jonathan Glover about a woman who lived close to a concentration camp and felt empathy for those being tortured. Her response was to ask that the torture be done elsewhere, where it wouldn't disturb her. This was one of a series of examples meant to show how empathy need not make us good.

When we engage with people from the Majority World church, many of whose lives are characterized by hardship and suffering, they ask us, not unlike Thomas asked of Jesus, "Show us your scars, and then we'll believe that you understand the same gospel that we've embraced.

Treating a disease and treating a person are very different concerns, because recovery depends in large part on the mind and spirit of the patient. Suffering, a state of mind, involves the entire person.

Accept the long night patiently, quietly, humbly, and resignedly as intended for your true good. It is not a punishment for sin committed but an instrument of annihilating egoism.

Inquisitor Hugo de Beniols had a number of prominent people burned alive at Toulouse, in 1275, among them Angèle, Lady of Labarthe, a woman of sixty-five years accused of sexual intercourse with Satan.

Blessed is he who has found enlightenment. He conquers, although he may be wounded; he is glorious and happy, although he may suffer; he is strong, although he may break down under the burden of his work; he is immortal, although he may die. The essence of his being is purity and goodness. 14

The hangman binds the woman, who was pregnant, and places her on the rack. Then he racked her till her heart would fain break, but had no compassion. (2) When she did not confess, the torture was repeated, the hangman tied her hands, cut off her hair, poured brandy over her head and burned it. (3) He placed sulphur in her armpits and burned it. (4) Her hands were tied behind her, and she was hauled up to the ceiling and suddenly dropped down.

spills of mire I swallowed inside the tower

I Hear that the Axe has Flowered I hear that the axe has flowered, I hear that the place can't be named, I hear that the bread which looks at him heals the hanged man, the bread baked for him by his wife, I hear that they call life our only refuge.

Black milk of dawn we drink you at night we drink you mornings and noontime we drink you evenings we drink and we drink

Ich kenne dich, du bist die tief Gebeugte, ich, der Durchbohrte, bin dir untertan. Wo flammt ein Wort, das für uns beide zeugte? Du—ganz, ganz wirklich. Ich—ganz Wahn.)

Von der sinkenden Walstirn les ich dich ab – du erkennst mich, der Himmel stürzt sich in die Harpune, sechsbeinig hockt unser Stern im Schaum, langsam hißt einer, der's sieht, den Trosthappen: das balzende Nichts.

Every philosophy of life will have an anthropology—a stance on what a human is. Do we interpret the human being through the grid of economics and class struggle (Marxism), biology and the struggle to survive (naturalistic Darwinism), or suffering produced by attachment to transitory things (Buddhism)? Are we bundles of experiences, streams of consciousness?

The Christian takes strength and comfort in the fact that God suffers with us and even enters into our suffering—particularly in the person of Jesus of Nazareth on the shameful, humiliating cross. Indeed, a God who doesn't suffer "would make God a demon." An indifferent God would condemn human beings to indifference as well.

Christopher Lassiter pinched the top of his nose and closed his eyes. Quiet desperation is the English way.

See the stone set in your eyes,see the thorn twist in your side.I wait for you

The good news of the kingdom is not freedom from hardship, suffering, and loss. It is the news of a Redeemer who has come to scue me from myself.

God decided to leave you in this fallen world to live, love, and work, because he intended to use the difficulties you face to do something in you that couldn't be done any other way.

you never just suffer the thing that you're suffering, but you always also suffer the way that you're suffering that thing.

God has chosen to let you live in this fallen world because he plans to employ the difficulties of it to continue and complete his work in you.

When the thing you have been trusting (whether you knew it or not) is laid to waste, you don't suffer just the loss of that thing; you also suffer the loss of the identity and security that it provided.

Your suffering is not a sign that you've been forsaken; rather, it's a sign that you live in a world that doesn't function the way God intended and is in need of complete renewal.

Suffering has the power to expose what you have been trusting all along. If you lose your hope when your physical body fails, maybe your hope wasn't really in your Savior after all. It was humbling to confess that what I thought was faith was actually self-reliance

Scripture never looks down on the sufferer, it never mocks his pain, it never turns a deaf ear to his cries, and it never condemns him for his struggle. It presents to the sufferer a God who understands, who cares, who invites us to come to him for help, and who promises one day to end all suffering of any kind once and forever.