Suffering

“Grief comes easily to me. The furnace of my many afflictions—stoked by painful bone disease, stage 4 cancer, advancing arthritis, perpetual 35-year-long head pain…. When you grieve as much as I have, you sometimes wonder what the Lord thinks of it. Is my grief permissible, or have I fallen into grieving doubt and self-pitying discontent?” - TGC

“This month marks five years since my family and I survived a plane crash. When landing, the plane skidded off the runway and down a steep incline, breaking in two before it ran into a concrete barrier that stopped it.” - 9 Marks

“Those who have been cast out of their biological families for following Christ now have God’s family to welcome them. Even if they don’t own their own houses, they have hundreds of houses to stay in, where they’ll be warmly welcomed. Jesus promises not only eternal happiness but a hundred times more happiness here and now.” - Randy Alcorn

“Most people today understand evil as anything that harms others…. Evil is the fundamental and troubling departure from goodness. The Bible uses the word evil to describe that which violates God’s moral will.” - Randy Alcorn

“On hearing this, Peter… asked, ‘Lord, what about him?’ Instinctively he wanted to compare God’s difficult calling on his life with His plans for John. Jesus answered, ‘If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.’” - Randy Alcorn

“Though they seem opposites, detachment and indulgence are two sides of the same bad coin. Both are, in the end, attempts to escape the pain of what Christianity recognizes as a fallen world. These attempts are, however, futile.” - Breakpoint

“My flesh is wasting away, and who would blame me if I complained? Certainly not the world — it’s natural for them to expect an old lady in a wheelchair to grumble over her losses. But followers of Jesus Christ should expect more from me. Much more.” - Joni Eareckson Tada

“we’re so close to the situation that it’s hard to see anything other than the struggle. We see the ‘black,’ but we can’t see how that same struggle fits into the bigger picture. We can’t see the overall beauty because we’re too close to the picture.” - Chuck Lawless

“intellectual solutions weren’t what Lewis needed in those moments. His arguments hadn’t lost their rationality; they’d lost their emotional weight. In the face of his wife’s death, they now felt hollow.” - TGC

“Whether we’re debilitated by such extreme anxiety that we can barely function or we’re simply tired, each day brings with it a choice. Each and every day, we have to choose to live. For those with mental affliction, making that choice can be grueling.” - TGC