Quotes about Suffering

Because we suddenly see that making everything all right would NOT make everything all right. We would not be human beings. We would then be no more than puppets obeying the strings of the master puppeteer. We agree sadly that it is a good thing that we are not God; we do not have to understand God's ways, or the suffering and brokenness and pain that sooner or later come to us all.

Compassion means to suffer with, but it doesn't mean to get lost in the suffering, so that it becomes exclusively one's own. I tend to do this, to replace the person for whom I am feeling compassion with myself.

Joy is what has made the pain bearable and, in the end, creative rather than destructive.

we do not have to understand God's ways, or the suffering and brokenness and pain that sooner or later come to us all. But we do have to know in the very depths of our being that the ultimate end of the story, no matter how many aeons it takes, is going to be all right.

God doesn't stop the bad things from happening; that's never been part of the promise. The promise is: I am with you. I am with you now until the end of time.

Matt, I saw a man with his face blown off and no mouth to scream with, and yet he screamed and could not die. I saw two brothers, and one was in blue and one was in grey, and I will not tell you which one took his saber and ran it through the other. Oh God, it was brother against brother, Cain and Abel all over again. And I was turned into Cain. What would God have to do with a nation where brothers can turn against each other with such brutality?

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' For our sakes Jesus went through all the suffering we may ever have to endure, and because he cried out those words we may cry them out, too.

Expand my love, Lord, so I can help to bear the pain, help your love move my love into the tired prostitute with false eyelashes and bunioned feet, the corrupt policeman with his hand open for graft, the addict, the derelict, the woman in the mink coat and discontented mouth, the high school girl with heavy books and frightened eyes. Help me through these scandalous particulars to understand your love. Help me to pray.

The better word, of course, is joy, because it doesn't have anything to do with pain, physical or spiritual. I have been wholly in joy when I have been in pain—childbirth is the obvious example. Joy is what has made the pain bearable and, in the end, creative rather than destructive.

God doesn't plan the horrors. They happen. But God can come into them.

believe God can come into the terrible things and redeem them.

You know when you cut yourself really badly, it doesn't hurt for a while. You don't feel anything. Death- our reaction to death- is sort of like that. You don't feel anything at all. And then, later on, you begin to hurt.