And so we gain hope—not from the darkness of our suffering, not from pat answers in books, but from the God who sees our suffering and shares our pain.

Neither explaining suffering nor offering a program for the elimination of suffering, Lamentations keeps company with the extensive biblical witness that gives dignity to suffering by insisting that God enters our suffering and is companion to our suffering.

No literature is more realistic and honest in facing the harsh facts of life than the Bible. At no time is there the faintest suggestion that the life of faith exempts us from difficulties.

From an outsider it must have looked much of the time as if the wicked fist dominated the Israelites' lives. From the inside the witness of faith said that it did not:

Anyone signing up for the kingdom of God has to go through plenty of hard times.

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.

The plows of persecution aren't working, and the oxherds haven't even noticed! They plod back and forth, unaware that their opposition is worthless.

A Christian is a person who decides to face and live through suffering.

Oh ! the blessed confessors of the kingdom of Christ, who were tried like gold in the excellence of their righteousness, and obtained through the conflict in which they were set the heavenly life of angels, and laid hold upon the promises of the hidden good things of the victory of the high calling--For eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for them that love him.

You picked me up from school You attended all my sporting functions You bought me a car Gave me use of a credit card But how can I feel pain, How can I feel pain, How can I feel pain When you're being so supportive?

As Christians, we must get rid of the notion that the only answer for life's troubles is for us to die and go to heaven. Don't be mistaken—heaven is real and is greater than we can possibly imagine. But the kind of attitude that says rescue from this earth is the only thing we live for is an insult to the power of the blood of Jesus and the purpose of redemption.

I, Master John Hus, in chains and in prison, now standing on the shore of this present life and expecting on the morrow a dreadful death, which will, I hope, purge away my sins, find no heresy in myself, and accept with all my heart any truth whatsoever that is worthy of belief.