Quotes about Suffering

Painful experiences can be used to better prepare us for heaven. You see, if we let it, even pain can shape us—make us better people—get rid of some of the ugly parts of our humanity.

I would like to introduce you further to our Lord God through the holy writings. David was a man chosen by God, anointed as king, and yet he too suffered. As do we all. And here is the key. Our God has been with us all along. Our God awaits the moment when we turn to him and ask his forgiveness, his blessing, his anointing, his peace.

Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is unlike agony.

Unfortunately, after Sept. 11, there was an outburst in America of intense suffering and patriotism, and the Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous.

Anyone who takes the Bible seriously agrees that God hates suffering. Jesus spent most of his time relieving it. But when being healed becomes the only goal - 'I'm not letting go until I get what I want' - it's a problem.

Regardless of the source of our pain, we must accept that God knows, God loves, and God is at work.

This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings.

Thus the call to follow Christ always means a call to share the work of forgiving men their sins. Forgiveness is the Christlike suffering which it is the Christian's duty to bear.

God deliberately chooses weak, suffering and unlikely candidates to get His work done, so that in the end, the glory goes to God and not to the person.

A true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.

Suffering prepares you by training you to trust God and know that He is always at work in your life.

That Religion is not devotion, but work and suffering for the love of God; this is the true doctrine of Mystics.