Quotes about Suffering

Viktor Frankl, who spent time in one of Hitler's camps, said, "Despair is suffering without meaning.

the best way to prepare for suffering is to work on a strong, supportive life when you're healthy.

Pain allows us, the fortunate ones at least, to lead free and active lives. If you ever doubt that, visit a leprosarium and observe for yourself a world without pain.

Where is God when it hurts? I have often asked. The answer is another question, Where is the church when it hurts?

That this world spoiled by evil and suffering still exists at all is an example of God's mercy, not his cruelty.

Modern books on pain make a sharp contrast. Their authors assume that the amount of evil and suffering in the world cannot be matched with the traditional view of a good and loving God. God is thus bumped from a "friend of the court" position to the box reserved for the defendant. "How can you possibly justify yourself, God?" these angry moderns seem to say.

Perhaps the greatest way to give suffering people time is being patient with them — giving them room to doubt, cry, question and work out strong and often extreme emotions.

Not until history has run its course will we understand how "all things work together for good." Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.

the parents of a severely disabled child have no end in sight.

Wounded people who have been broken by suffering and sickness ask for only one thing: a heart that loves and commits itself to them, a heart full of hope for them.

That, I believe, is also what faith sometimes requires: trusting God when there is no apparent evidence of him—as Job did. Trusting in his ultimate goodness, a goodness that exists outside of time, a goodness that time has not yet caught up with.

In his list of fruits of the Spirit, Paul includes one that we translate with the archaic word "long-suffering." We would do well to revive that word, and concept, in its most literal form to apply to the problem of long-term pain.