I don't think it is as much a human foible as it is a human curse that we cannot understand the beauty of a thing until it is gone.

Grief is the truest evidence of love. And we should always be grateful to have something to love, even if it means that we have to lose it.

The changing seasons of circumstance can melt away stretches of our lives like frost in the warmth of spring.

Before the truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.

The fourth is the thought of the sorrows that Christ bore gladly for us. If the only Man who ever could choose His fate on earth chose pain, what great value He must have seen in it! So we observe that, borne with serenity and joy, suffering redeems.

For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21). "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul" (Matthew 10:28).

Worms, fire, or the sea might consume my body. But my spirit will live in a world with no more wanderings and trials. I do not have to pass through many painful incarnations. Beyond death lies paradise.

churches for their purposes, Richard

There was once a fiddler who played so beauitully that everybody danced. A deaf man who could not hear the music considered them all insane. Those who are with Jesus in suffering hear this music to which other men are deaf. They dance and do not care if they are considered insane.

Even the best of Christians are troubled by the question, "Why does an almighty God send, or at least allow, suffering?" When you are nagged by thoughts like this, say to yourself, "I am still in elementary school. When I graduate from the university of Christian life, I will understand His ways better and doubts will cease.

it's easy to forget that the pursuit of happiness is not what life is about. Only as we remember that life is a test, a trust, and a temporary assignment will the appeal of these things lose their grip on our lives. We are preparing for something even better. "The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever."10

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