#suffering

There are times when we suffer innocently at other people’s hands. When that occurs, we are victims of injustice. But that injustice happens on a horizontal plane. No one ever suffers injustice on the vertical plane. That is, no one ever suffers unjustly in terms of his or her relationship with God. As long as we bear the guilt of sin, we cannot protest that God is unjust in allowing us to suffer. ↗

— R.C. Sproul

#god #gospel #justice #suffering #injustice

A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains. ↗

— Criss Jami

#adversity #artist #craftiness #craftsmanship #crafty

God will never disappoint us… If deep in our hearts we suspect that God does not love us and cannot manage our affairs as well as we can, we certainly will not submit to His discipline. …To the unbeliever the fact of suffering only convinces him that God is not to be trusted, does not love us. To the believer, the opposite is true. ↗

— Elisabeth Elliot

#goodness #pain #suffering #trust #love

Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands in the very teeth of suffering. ↗

— Elisabeth Elliot

#love #love-of-god #suffering #imagination

Suffering occurs when we want other people to love us in the way we imagine we want to be loved, and not in the way that love should manifest itself--free and untrammeled, guiding us with its force and driving us on. ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#true-love #imagination

Most of us tend to belittle all suffering except our own," said Mary. "I think it's fear. We don't want to come too near in case we're sucked in and have to share it. ↗

— Elizabeth Goudge

#fear #suffering #empathy

To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love. (157) ↗

— Stephen Batchelor

#empathy #love #suffering #love

The parts of me that hurt the worst want me to write something for them, but I can't. I don't know what to say. I'm lost in all this sadness, and so are they. ↗

— Ashly Lorenzana

#pain #poetry #poetry-quotes #sadness #suffering

There would be no more offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complaining, bickering, decrying the unfairness of things but always - always - returning to obedience at whatever the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future generations scarred by the cold fires of radiation and renewed hatred. ↗

— Dan Simmons

#hatred #obedience #religion #searching #suffering

In the end, even the “yes” to love is a source of suffering, because love always requires expropriations of my “I”, in which I allow myself to be pruned and wounded. Love simply cannot exist without this painful renunciation of myself, for otherwise it becomes pure selfishness and thereby ceases to be love. ↗

— Pope Benedict XVI

#selfishness #suffering #love