healing on Adversity

The renowned scholar and musician Albert Schweitzer’s life was turned upside down one summer morning in 1896 while reading his Bible. He came upon Matthew 16:25: “For whosoever will save his life shal...

All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.

In the last resort it is highly improbable that there could ever be a therapy which gets rid of all difficulties. Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. ...

Psychiatrist James Knight describes in graphic detail the experience that members of Alcoholics Anonymous experience: These persons have had their lives laid bare and pushed to the brink of destructi...

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story.

Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love ...

In her book The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp shares a beautiful exchange between her and her husband (The farmer). His encouragement is for all of us: that God uses the broken things in this world for good...

The comedian Richard Pryor, who was critically injured in a severe accident, once shared on Johnny Carson’s show that when faced with life-threatening situations, worldly concerns lose their significa...

The people who have been made larger by suffering are brave enough to let parts of their old self die. Down in the valley, their motivations changed. They’ve gone from self-centered to other-centered.

Remember Miss Haversham in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations? Her entire life was defined by the fact that she was jilted on her wedding day. People can become very attached to their pain and i...

Heavenly Father: You know all about us – our weakness, our failing, our sin; And you still love us enough to give your Son to redeem us. Hear the cries of our hearts today. There’s someone for who...

Sometimes we have to “step over” our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on. The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there...

Pastor: “O LORD, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing; heal me, O LORD, for my bones are troubled. All: “My soul also is grea...

Dawn grew up in a family in which she felt she had a fairly happy childhood. But in her adult years she struggled greatly with emotional, psychological, and physical maladies. She never felt a sense o...

In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light fo...

In her book, Grace for the Good Girl , Emily P. Freeman charts her early years growing up in the church believing in grace but living according to the rules of perfection. One thing that would, a...

A Chinese Christian who heard me speak once asked me if I would write a tract about suffering for his fellow believers in the Orient. I told him I would think about it. But when I did, I realized that...

We cannot change our past. We can not change the fact that people act in a certain way. We can not change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our at...

Paradoxically…healing means moving from your pain to the pain…When you keep focusing on the specific circumstances of your pain, you easily become angry, resentful, and even vindictive. You are inclin...

Healing begins when, in the face of our own darkness, we recognize our helplessness and surrender our need for control… we face what is, and we ask for mercy.

Jesus reminds us that the wounds of scarcity can be healed only by faith in God’s promise of abundance.

One of the challenges, at least in the western church, is an inability to deal with our wounds in a healthy way. Our training as Christians has been focused on Bible studies, small groups, and Sunday ...

The strangest thing happens when what we have most wanted to conceal is brought into the open. We don’t die. Instead, we often begin to heal.

The women’s response brings readers face to face with the mystery of faith. There are no heroes among Jesus’ followers. The hostility that put Jesus on the cross has reduced them all to flight and fea...

What is the shape of your pain? Is your pain a gaping wound? Is it stuffed into the back corner of a closet, or is it neatly categorized and filed away with annotations that no one but you understand?...

My husband, Doug, is an athlete whose body is protesting. He has had numerous knee injuries and torn his Achilles tendon twice. Doctors have operated on him, put casts on him and sent him home, thereb...

Gracious God, how often we have withheld a word of kindness, of truth and of love. We have lifted our voices in quick criticism rather than gracious encouragement. Through our actions and inactions we...

Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk th...

Context This Sunday’s passage takes place during Jesus’ long final journey to Jerusalem (which takes up over a third of Luke’s Gospel). In the preceding pericope the disciples have asked Jesus to in...