Quotes about Suffering

Hope does not mean that we will avoid or be able to ignore suffering, of course. Indeed, hope born of faith becomes matured and purified through difficulty. The surprise we experience in hope, then, is not that, unexpectedly, things turn out better than expected. For even when they do not, we can still live with a keen hope. The basis of our hope has to do with the One who is stronger than life and suffering. Faith opens us up to God's sustaining, healing presence.

The situation which brought about your pain was simply the form in which you came in touch with the human condition of suffering.

Jesus, the man of sorrows, and we, the people of sorrow, hang there between heaven and earth, crying out, "God, our God, why have you forsaken us?

We resist getting near the suffering of another partly out of our unwillingness to suffer ourselves.

There is so much rejection, pain, and woundedness among us, but once you choose to claim the joy hidden in the midst of all suffering, life becomes celebration. Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy.

Jesus reaches out to the suffering world from the silent center where he stands in full attentiveness to his Father.

Suffering is not the issue. Fellowship with Jesus Christ is not a commitment to suffer as much as possible, but a commitment to listen with him to God's love without fear. It is to obedience that we are called.

There is great pain and suffering in the world. But the pain hardest to bear is your own.

We do not have to go after crosses, but we have to take up the crosses that have been ours all along.

I can see three ways to a truly compassionate fatherhood: grief, forgiveness, and generosity. Grief is the discipline of the heart that sees the sin of the world, and knows itself to be the sorrowful price of freedom without which love cannot bloom. I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving. Grief allows me to see beyond my wall and realize the immense suffering that results from human lostness.

Pain suffered alone feels very different from pain suffered alongside another. Even when the pain stays, we know how great the difference if another draws close, if another shares with us in it.

Rembrandt portrays the father as the man who has transcended the ways of his children. His own loneliness and anger may have been there, but they have been transformed by suffering and tears. I see the immense beauty of the father's emptiness and compassion.