#suffering

God has chosen to save the world through the cross, through the shameful and powerless death of the crucified Messiah. If that shocking event is the revelation of the deepest truth about the character of God, then our whole way of seeing the world is turned upside down… all values are transformed… God refuses to play games of power and prestige on human terms. ↗

— Richard Hays

#god #power #suffering #weakness #death

If Christ is God, He cannot sin, and if suffering was a sin in and by itself, He could not have suffered and died for us. However, since He took the most horrific death to redeem us, He showed us in fact that suffering and pain have great power. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#cross #death #death-and-dying #god #good-friday

I had great pity on Ansje, because she always acted very happy, but I believed that it was really a front. I could see through it. Inside she was crying because she was really very sad. You pity people like that -- the ones who try to lie to themselves -- because they suffer so much and don't face reality. ↗

— Diet Eman

#lying-to-ourselves #pity #reality #suffering #diet

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and ugliness; accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, real hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap. A man of the Classical Age who had to live in medieval times would suffocate miserably just as a savage does in the midst of our civilization. Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence. Naturally, everyone does not feel this equally strongly. A nature such as Nietzsche’s had to suffer our present ills more than a generation in advance. What he had to go through alone and misunderstood, thousands suffer today. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#age

Suffering provides the gym equipment on which my faith can be exercised. ↗

— Joni Eareckson Tada

#faith #suffering #theology #faith

Encounter Jesus. Suffer with him to experience his life more fully. Be holy in your love for God and his church as God is holy in his love for you and his church. Imagine what awaits those who now walk by faith, when faith and hope give way to the fullness of love when Jesus appears, when faith becomes sight at the consummation of Jesus' union with his people at the marriage supper of the Lamb. ↗

— Paul Louis Metzger

#holy-in-christ #suffering #experience

Buddha says there are two kinds of suffering: the kind that leads to more suffering and the kind that brings an end to suffering. ↗

— Terry Tempest Williams

#suffering #family

Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering. ↗

— Roland Barthes

#grief #loss #mourning #suffering #death

One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#huxley #suffering #friendship

We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues, and thanked God that he was not like other men. Unamuno might be describing the artist as well as the Christian as he writes, "Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself. ↗

— Madeleine L'Engle

#christian-living #doubt #faith #god #suffering