All suffering, all pain, all emptiness, all disappointment is seed: sow it in God and he will, finally, bring a crop of joy from it.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, one of our great modern Isaian prophets who had extensive experience with violence in two world wars, wrote, "The greatest temptation of our time is impatience, in its full original meaning: refusal to wait, undergo, suffer. We seem unwilling to pay the price of living with our fellows in creative and profound relationships."

It's how we survive the hurts in life that brings us strength and gives us our beauty.

Good things do come out of deep sorrow and great loss...at least in time.

Eternity puts loss in its place. Losses are temporary. Every setback and defeat is put in its place because of eternity. And then add to that the realization that the work of the Redeemer takes every bad situation and works it for our good. So not only is every loss temporary, it is actually reversed in its effect to become a blessing and even grounds for personal promotion and gain. And all of that pertains to loss. This is why every believer is able to live with constant hope.

People ask me, "What about Job?" My response is, "What about Jesus?" Job provides the question. Jesus gives the answer. The story of Job is about holding to our faith in the midst of trials and seeing God restore everything brilliantly. But the story of Jesus is the only one I follow.

If there were no night, we would not appreciate the day, nor could we see the stars and the vastness of the heavens. We must partake of the bitter with the sweet. There is a divine purpose in the adversities we encounter every day. They prepare, they purge, they purify, and thus they bless.

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.

When you have an open wound, it's festering and hurting constantly. Then it finally heals and then becomes a scar. Well, pretty soon you're not feeling it and not really paying attention to it.

I learned to assemble a rifle in the dark and was trained as a sniper so that I could hit the center of the target time after time. As it happened, I never did get into actual combat, but that didn't prevent my being severely wounded. I almost lost both my feet as a result of a bombing attack on Jerusalem.

I understand you've got to go through tough times to get better.

Touring itself - and I was very young, and a lot of it I did by myself - it's lonely, but it does give you some kind of spine, I think. It does give you some kind of grit.