suffering on Disappointment

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...

I was standing in line in a crowded public rest room engaged in one of my favorite hobbies, people watching, when I observed a brief interaction between a mother and daughter. Mother looked harried an...

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...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? A Structured Complaint The Psalmist organizes his complaint against God in three sections. The first two sections dramatize the complaint (vv. 1-11 and...

Preaching Commentary Paying Close Attention to Subjects and Verbs Psalm 22 is well known to Christians because our Savior used this psalm in his dying hours on the cross (Matt. 46), quoted in Arama...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? A Structured Complaint The Psalmist organizes his complaint against God in three sections. The first two sections dramatize the complaint (vv. 1-11 and...

On May 20, 1990, 42-year-old Georgene Johnson arrived 15 min early for her 10K race (6.2 mi) as part of the Revco-Cleveland Marathon and found runners already heading down the course. So, she jumped i...

Through the repeated hammer blows of defeat, destruction, and deportation, interpreted by the faithful prophets, Israel has to learn that election is not for comfort and security but for suffering and...

Hope is the power of being cheerful in the presence of circumstances we know to be desperate.

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

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...

When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.

Faith does not grow in spite of suffering, but through suffering, when hope learns to contradict reality.

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...

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.

The etymology of certain words can profoundly enrich our understanding and experience of life. Consider the word “consolation.” Its roots lie in the Latin words “con-” meaning “ “to be ” and “solus,...

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...

God’s idea of ministry training is a broken vessel. His idea of spiritual preparation is suffering, which includes rejection. Here is the biblical recipe for ministry preparation—a recipe that’s glari...

Beloved, have you ever thought that someday you will not have anything to try you, or anyone to vex you again? There will be no opportunity in heaven to learn or to show the spirit of patience, forbea...

There is in the psalms no quick and easy resignation to suffering.  There is always struggle, anxiety, and doubt. God’s righteousness, which allows the pious to be met by misfortune but the godless to...

They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.

The point [of suffering] is that while Christians may suffer in this age and so have no future here, there is waiting for the faithful a reward as sure and as real as that of Abraham, a reward far bet...

Paying Close Attention to Subjects and Verbs Psalm 22 is well known to Christians because our Savior used this psalm in his dying hours on the cross (Matt. 46), quoted in Aramaic, his native language...

This is one of the sad conditions of life, that experience is not transmissible. No man will learn from the suffering of another; he must suffer himself.

Pastor: For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised ...

Advent 2020: Tear Down the Heavens Dressed in Righteousness Updated & expanded for 2023 AIM Commentary Ancient lens What's the historical context? Living as Captives Our text t...

I think the mistake most of us make about beauty is that we expect it to be pretty—to please us with its proportions, its balance, its harmony, its rhyme. If those are your requirements, I doubt I wil...

In this short excerpt, pastor and author Austin Fischer describes a surprising dynamic that sometimes occurs in the life of a Christian: believing so strongly in a loving God that one cannot fathom th...

I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?...The point is that he felt human de...

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...