Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep
Taking heaven seriously, then, means taking suffering seriously, now. Not because we’ve bought into the myth that we can create a utopia given enough time, technology, and good voting choices, but because we have great confidence that God has not abandoned human history and is actively at work within it, taking it somewhere.
Rob Bell • Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived
But it need not be. For does it really matter if a woman believes in heavenly abodes when the blood of loss pours forth from between her legs? She may find courage in prayer. She may find comfort in spending quiet time alone in nature. From whatever source, it is the construction of narratives of meaning and the discovery of sources of strength tha
... See moreAmy Wright Glenn • Holding Space: On Loving, Dying, and Letting Go
I have realised that it is a moral error to compulsively fixate on the world's troubles, to elevate ‘the crack in everything’ and not acknowledge ‘the light getting in.’ Our pleasures and joys are not a negation of humanity's suffering, a betrayal of those we have lost, or the denial of our various griefs. They are the bright, necessary, God-filled... See more
Reader
We should not say, “Everything’s going to be fine,” or even, “You’re going to be okay.”
This is not true even on the most normal day. Every human being will die; practically every person will endure terrible suffering of one kind or another. These phrases can be appropriate when used by a parent comforting a small child, but they are not the languag