Quotes about Suffering

It often appears that those who talk the most about going to heaven when you die talk the least about bringing heaven to earth right now, as Jesus taught us to pray: "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." At the same time, it often appears that those who talk the most about relieving suffering now talk the least about heaven when we die.

Suffering and loss have this extraordinary capacity to alert and awaken us to the gift that life is.

When we hear people saying they can't believe in a God who gets angry—yes, they can. How should God react to a child being forced into prostitution? How should God feel about a country starving while warlords hoard the food supply? What kind of God wouldn't get angry at a financial scheme that robs thousands of people of their life savings?

Grievances are a form of impatience. Griefs are a form of patience.

If you think beauty insipid, you haven't experienced it. Nor is it always devoid of suffering. That's something religious artists have always understood, Michelangelo, Chagall, and Van Gogh, Beethoven, C.S. Lewis, and all the writer's for whom beauty is a gift and a calling.

Knowing the Lord was in their midst took the edge off the agony. Told You Twice

The human capacity for suffering was like that for joy. It could only have the greatest impact in small doses. After that, mind and body could no longer take it in.

An abusive relationship is worse than being in prison. I mean literally, not figuratively.

A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.

Christianity is the only religion whose God bears the scars of evil.

Perhaps the saddest thing to admit is that those who rejected the Cross have to carry it, while those who welcomed it are so often engaged in crucifying others.

Unless there is a Good Friday in your life, there can be no Easter Sunday.