suffering on Crises

What is “Good” about Friday? For the work-a-day world in the United States of America, Fridays are good. TGIF, “Thank God It’s Friday!” is an interjection we use to convey relief that the work week i...

Preaching Commentary What is “Good” about Friday? For the work-a-day world in the United States of America, Fridays are good. TGIF, “Thank God It’s Friday!” is an interjection we use to convey reli...

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...

Until leaders have suffered, and have learned to steward their pain, they don’t really have much to offer.

Reflection The television series Alone follows ten individuals who are left to fend for themselves and by themselves in the wilderness. Now, these aren’t everyday individuals plucked from Main St...

God who hears our cries and is moved by our suffering, Speak to us a word of comfort, challenge, co-mission. Capture our attention and call us out of our routines, That we might catch a vision of your...

Almighty and loving God, all of us here today are hurting. Some of us are hurting as the result of circumstances beyond our control. Some of us are hurting because of our own choices. Some of us are f...

When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one.

Faithful God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You are always there in times of transition or trial, times of uncertainty and anxiety, or times of accomplishment and celebration. You do not leave us nor fo...

We don’t know what we are doing, and I think this is especially true about the way our society deals with mental health. In just the past fifteen years, I have witnessed a massive shift in how evangel...

God—We’d like to have had a Hallmark card kind of week: gentle, quiet and serene, but it’s been anything but that. People died this week—and families and friends grieve. A man got bad news about cance...

Trials are intended to make us think, to wean us from the world, to send us to the Bible, to drive us to our knees.

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

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of t...

During an earthquake it sometimes happens that fresh springs break out in dry places which water and quicken the land so that plants can grow. In the same way the shattering experiences of suffering c...

[Every culture has provided an] explanation of human events that bestows meaning upon the experiences of suffering and evil.

Suffering has no answers. But it does carry an invitation. It invites us into mystery. It invites us to surrender without explanation to something we cannot understand. In the dark helplessness of our...

It is necessary that our sharpest trials should sometimes spring from our dearest comforts; else we should be in danger of forgetting ourselves and setting up our rest here.

O God, from whom to be turned is to fall, to whom to be turned is to rise, and with whom to stand is to abide for ever; grant us in all our duties your help, in all our perplexities your guidance,...

The sufferings of Paul are not interruptions to his mission but are intrinsic to it; through them the message of Christ crucified is embodied.

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...

The suffering addressed in 1 Peter is not random misfortune but the social cost of a new identity that challenges prevailing cultural norms.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

IDENTITY AND SUFFERING The key to understanding today’s readings lies in the first half of 1 Peter. Two themes dominate Peter’s encouragement to these early Christians: identity and suffering. Knowi...

We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course i...

Preaching Commentary At the Turning Point Following Simon Peter’s climatic height of his faith, his confession that Jesus was the “Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Peter now exemplifies our hum...

Sometimes evil can feel so strong, so powerful, that its damage seems permanent and the final word on the subject. In this short excerpt from Philip Yancey, we see a reversal, perhaps a foretaste of w...

Context This text comes near the midpoint of the Gospel of Mark, and its central narrative position is more than matched by its pivotal thematic content. Jesus has turned from his focus on ministry i...

In the summer of 2012, I knelt over the frail shell of a child, my son, strapped to all manner of medical monitoring equipment. His body failing, his frame thinning, the medical staff at Arkansas Chil...

[Speaking of crucifixion] It seems almost inevitable to me that Jesus should go through this kind of darkness. . . . If you think of Jesus as God disguised as a man, then this will have no meaning for...