Outrage is appropriate in response to genuine wrong, tears in response to grief, shock in response to unexpected disaster. We mustn't force ourselves to thank God for these things or we will be harder on ourselves and softer on evil than God is. It is not that even Christians need not give thanks for these things, but that Christians especially should not give thanks for them. We should always be as human as God made us.

I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.

Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.

What is the sign of a friend? Is it that he tells you his secret sorrows? No, it is that he tells you his secret joys. Many people will confide their secret sorrows to you, but the final mark of intimacy is when they share their secret joys with you.

The place for the comforter is not that of one who preaches, but of the comrade who says nothing and prays to God about the matter. The biggest thing you can do for those who are suffering is not to talk platitudes, not to ask questions, but to get into contact with God, and the "greater work" will be done by prayer.

If we were never depressed, we would not be alive—only material things don't suffer depression. If human beings were not capable of depression, we would have no capacity for happiness and exaltation.

They should be encouraged to bring all of who they are and what they know into each class. By welcoming the whole student into our classes, unfamiliar aspects of who they are and what they care about suddenly come into view. What are the heartfelt questions they struggle with? Are they too scared to acknowledge the hopes and aspirations they harbor for their lives and for this world?

I've accepted the fact that I'm going to be a sad man for the rest of my life because I get calls all the time of the saddest things that are happening in the church.

Here's the question: Will we allow the things that break God's heart to break our hearts too? It'll mean more tears, more listening. It may even be the reason why so many of us struggle with our own personal burdens and heartaches - God is allowing us to feel the pain, to be weak and broken so that our prayers have power.

Then she went off and sat down nearby, about a bowshot away, for she said, “I cannot bear to watch the boy die!” And as she sat nearby, she lifted up her voice and wept.

So he asked the officials of Pharaoh who were in custody with him in his master’s house, “Why are your faces so downcast today?”