Author | Vagabond Preacher | Lover of the Poor | Grandpa
“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.
“No soul will ever grow deep in the spiritual life unless God works in that soul by means of the dark night.” This is a line from the famous poem called, The Dark Night of the Soul, which Saint John of the Cross wrote from his ten-by-six feet prison cell in which he was imprisoned …
Continue reading "The Deepening Quality of Suffering (Avoiding Superficial Spirituality Part 10)"
To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. Henry David Thoreau In my darkest years, I was harassed by voices that accused me and terrorized me with memories of excruciating incidents. The voices jeered: “You’re alone, sick, and broke. God is …
You turned my mourning into dancing. Psalm 30:11 If you ask me, a lot of Christians worship the idol of “Positivity.” They’re afraid to grieve and are self-medicating on happiness. Though I advocate no grim view of God or the practice of sour spirituality I just think that in our effort to avoid despondency, we …
I recently ran across a copy of the prayer that Alcoholics Anonymous groups use in their meetings. The first stanza is the most familiar to the general public, but the whole prayer, originally written by Dr. Rheinhold Niebuhr, has become a salve to my chapped soul. I have used it repeatedly in my own conversations …
In two recent posts I suggested that we might think of the Creator as sort of like a “Traffic Engineer” who made a system that works for our maximum safety and minimum disasters. I qualified my remarks by admitting that God’s system doesn’t rule out traffic jams and accidents caused by freeway blowouts or wrecks …
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