Quotes about Suffering

I challenged God. I said, 'God, I know that I'm a sinner. I know that I won't probably have peace until You're in my heart. But I will not let You in my heart until You answer me, why? Why did you take my arms and legs? Why didn't You give me what everybody else has? God, until You answer me that question, I will not serve You.'

May nothing entice me till I happily make my way to Jesus Christ! Fire, cross, struggles with wild beasts, wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs - let them come to me, provided only I make my way to Jesus Christ.

I am writing to all the churches to let it be known that I will gladly die for God if only you do not stand in my way... Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God.

Some people who suffer run away from God, and I know the tendency, but instead I just run to Him.

To be a minister means above all to become powerless, or in more precise terms, to speak with our powerlessness to the condition of powerlessness which is so keenly felt but so seldom expressed by the people of our age.

They sought to pummel His pride, not understanding He'd laid it aside at birth, when He gave up heaven and came to earth.

Christians will be found in the neighbourhood of Jesus — but Jesus is found in the neighbourhood of human confusion and suffering, defencelessly alongside those in need. If being baptized is being led to where Jesus is, then being baptized is being led towards the chaos and the neediness of a humanity that has forgotten its own destiny.

Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God.

Just as gold is purified in the fire, so the soul is purified in sufferings.

Job endured everything — until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient.

let us speak of the wish and thereby of the sufferings; let us properly linger over this, convinced that one may learn more profoundly and more reliably what the highest is by considering suffering than by observing achievements, where so much that is distracting is present.

From earliest childhood, an arrow of grief has been embedded in my heart. As long as it remains there, I am ironic — if it is drawn out, I will die.