suffering on Stuffing Pain

In his book “Where Is God When It Hurts?”, author Philip Yancey shares an unfortunate, yet central dynamic related to how Americans respond to pain: we do everything possible to avoid it. That means p...

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?...

So pain endures for a time. Its role is to purge us, to make us to know ourselves, and it drives us to the Lord to plead for mercy.

My first recollection of real suffering occurred when I (Rich) was about eight and my uncle had died of leukemia. When Uncle Art finally succumbed, my parents brought me along with two of my sisters t...

If you do not transform your pain, you will surely transmit it.

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...

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

A few years ago, a vicious stomach bug swept through our community. (When you live in a religious community and one person gets sick, it’s just a matter of time before everyone else does too.) And one...

St. Paul rejoices that his sufferings help to complete what is lacking of afflictions of Christ. This seems to mean two things. First that the Christian’s suffering (in this case the Apostle’s) are a ...

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...

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.

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

God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives.

I am certain that I never did grow in grace one half so much anywhere as I have upon the bed of pain,”

Books on the problem of pain divide neatly into two groupings. The older ones, by people like Aquinas, Bunyan, Donne, Luther, Calvin, and Augustine, ungrudgingly accept pain and suffering as God’s use...

It is often said that people die as they lived. This was certainly true of the great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther. As Luther came close to the end of his life, he suffered from severe headaches w...

Will the Real Jesus, Please Stand Up? Quite a few years have passed since I sat through a systematic theology class and had the professor pitch a variety of difficult to hit balls at us regarding the...

[Christ] gives the analogy of bitter labor and says: “A woman when she bears a child has anguish and sorrow” (John 16:21) and He applies all of this to His suffering, in which He so hard and bitterly ...

Suffering is a dreadful teacher but often the beginning of the best in us. Suffering and creativity arc often interdependent. Pain produces a terrible tension released in our creative response. Suffer...

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find...

The bad news was that a friend’s leg was severed in a gruesome automobile accident. The good news was that it was surgically reattached. A few months later she asked if I wanted to see her scar. I swa...

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...

Do you want to be holy? Then you will suffer.

We frequently repress our desire for love because love makes us vulnerable to being hurt. The word passion, which is used to express strong loving desire, comes from the Latin root passus, which means...

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.

Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.

Pastor: He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities;  People: upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed. Pasto...

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...

We all know people who have been made much meaner and more irritable and more intolerable to live with by suffering: it is not right to say that all suffering perfects. It only perfects one type of pe...

The early church took a view of suffering that stands in testimony to our comfort-addicted culture. For example, Ignatius of Antioch, a martyr in the second century, forbade his community from asking ...