pain on Covid Pandemic

With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s...

Individual disasters, too, very largely follow upon human choices, our own or those of others. And whether or not they do in a particular case, the situations in which we find ourselves are never as i...

Living in a society governed by technique conditions us to believe that in every way life is easier than it ever has been. Technique is the use of rational methods to maximize efficiency, and we...

In those same weeks, Harper’s Magazine featured an evening-long conversation between two professors, Neil Postman and Camille Paglia, about the meaning of television for persons and for polities...

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

Live to the point of tears.

Was ever grief like mine?

I learned a long time ago that if I hustle fast enough, the emptiness will never catch up with me. First I outran it by traveling and dancing and drinking two-for-one whiskey sours at Calypso on State...

People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neigh...

God—our Father ... our Savior ... our Counselor and Friend: Thank you for daring to meet us at the most unlikely places, and in the most unexpected times of our lives. Thank you for redeeming our pain...

In a letter to his son, J. R. R. Tolkien famously wrote, “We all long for [Eden], and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is...

The prosperity gospel is a theodicy, an explanation for the problem of evil. It is an answer to the questions that take our lives apart: Why do some people get healed and some people don’t? Why do som...

We are a society that despises lack. We despise weakness and need and insufficiency. We turn the other way and pretend to be watching oncoming traffic when the red light halts us and the beggar reache...

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. . . . In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt,...

God of grace and God of glory on your people pour your power...Grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the facing of this hour. Lord—we need You...today, tomorrow and forever. We need you to heal those ...

There is an old story] about a man reciting a litany of woes to his friend—he has lost his job, his house, his money, his fiancée—and his friend keeps saying, “It could have been worse.” Finally the m...

Bear one another’s burdens, the Bible says. It is a lesson about pain that we all can agree on. Some of us will not see pain as a gift; some will always accuse God of being unfair for allowing it. But...

Pain is the most individualizing thing on earth. It is true that it is the great common bond as well, but that realization comes only when it is over. To suffer is to be alone. To watch another suffer...

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

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Trials are the ruler and scale to reveal in our lives.

Merciful God, we turn away from the pains and cries of our world. Overwhelmed by its brokenness, we ignore the call to engage and love those who are hurting. Father, forgive us, strengthen us, and hel...

There is no growth without change, no change without fear or loss and no loss without pain.

Amy Carmichael was a passionate missionary to India. She gave her life for the sake of those who had suffered the consequences of an unyielding caste system. She also had her suffering, due to physica...

Descend upon our hearts, Spirit of God, For our wills are weak, and we need your power. Our spirits are dry, and we need your refreshment. Our minds cannot comprehend, and we need your enlightenment....

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.

"And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with humanity. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be w...

To love means to open ourselves to suffering. Shall we shut our doors to love, then, and be “safe”?

Jesus, our Great Physician, our sins have brought wounds on ourselves and others. Heal our hearts first, that we would no longer desire the sins that have only brought us and others pain. Go on to hea...

In Bob Benson’s book “See You at the House” he recounts the story of a friend who had a heart attack. At first it didn’t seem like the man would live, but eventually he would recover, Months later, Bo...