Why should I keep holiday / When other men have none? / Why but because, when these are gay, / I sit and mourn alone? / And why, when mirth unseals all tongues, / Should mine alone be dumb? / Ah! late I spoke to silent throngs, / And now their hour is come.

She was the epitome of stately sorrow each time she smiled.

A martyred look accompanied this reply, belying her air of passionless indifference.

The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God's presence in Jesus' solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair.

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

God weeps with us so that we may one day laugh with him.

The miserable's name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.

To become a man was something, but to become a man of sorrows was far more; to bleed, and die, and suffer.

Where, but in the simplicity of the Gospel, can you hear about both the dignity of man and the misery of man?

God weeps with us so that we may one day laugh with him.

The next time you feel rejection's sting, remember God's words to Samuel: "It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me." (1 Sam. 8:7)

When we hurt, God doesn't always give us lots of words; he gives us the Word; the Word made flesh who is intimately acquainted with our grief and suffering. That's what helps the most.