Category: ON SUFFERING

“Weeping may endure for the night but joy comes in the morning.”

I risked making a category for the theme of “Suffering,” even though I know that many might avoid learning about it as much as they (we) try to avoid experiencing it. So, unless you’re in a season of suffering right now, or know someone who is, you’ll probably be apt to skip these posts altogether. On the other hand, if you’re reading this, it means you’ve at least clicked on the title, so you must have some sort of interest (whether a personal or compassionate one).

Before I had a “dark night of the soul” season myself, I had compassion for sufferers, but didn’t really know how help them. I pastored three churches for about 30 years, and as I look back over my file of messages on this theme, I realize that though I taught biblically, engagingly (if I must say so myself), and compassionately – I really had very little idea of what I was talking about. I think it was all pretty much biblical but not very personal. It’s different with me now.

Now when I hear or read someone’s thoughts on suffering I wonder if they’ve felt significant pain in their own lives or not. If they haven’t, of course they’re not disqualified from teaching others about it, it’s just that there’s a difference between knowledge and wisdom, the latter coming from experience.

I’m not claiming to know everything there is to know about physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual misery; but I have lerned a few things since I’ve wept through a night or two and have also seen the joy that comes in the morning.

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God’s Kiss

So when you see your hair falling out in clumps, you could choose to celebrate it as an indicator that the cancer-killing chemicals, like assassins are hitting their targets, so chalk up the loss of mane as collateral damage. I didn’t need a blood test or an x-ray to tell me that cells–– the good, …

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Making My Mind, Mind

After some of my well-meaning friends added to my confusion with sincere, but unwise, advice and comments, I applied the blood of Jesus to the doorpost of my mind and asked for the toxic thoughts to be turned away. I pleaded with God to save me from fear, anxiety, vengeance, bitterness, worthlessness, hopelessness, and despair …

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Exquisite Fellowship

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings.” Philippians 3: 10 As fellow sufferers, our communion with each other in our common ground warms us. But even more significantly, when we suffer we may have fellowship with the greatest sufferer in history, who is …

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Golden Silence

I wonder if Job’s “friends” had ever personally sat at the Sufferers’ Club table. If they had never been exposed to their own “valley of shadows,” it’s no wonder that they were limited in their ability to relate to his. They started out well when they “sat on the ground with him for seven days …

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