We are one in suffering. Some are wealthy, some bright; some athletic, some admired. But we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love. Some do not suffer much, though, for they do not love much. Suffering is for the loving. …
This, said Jesus, is the command of the Holy One: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In commanding us to love, God invites us to suffer.
“
| — |
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son
|
Our embarrassment in reading the harsh expressions of divine wrath is also due to the general disposition of modern man. We have no sense for spiritual grandeur. Spiritual to us means ethereal, calm, moderate, slight, imperceptible. We respond to beauty; grandeur is unbearable. We are moved by a soft religiosity, and would like to think that God is lovely, tender, and familiar, as if faith were a source of comfort, but not readiness for martyrdom.
To our mind the terrible threats of castigation bespeak a lack of moderation. Is it not because we are only dimly aware of the full gravity of human failure, of the sufferings inflicted by those who revile God’s demand for justice? There is a cruelty which pardons, just as there is a pity which punishes. Severity must tame whom love cannot win.
Those of us to whom the crimes of the world are mere incidents, and the agony of the poor is one of the many facts of life, may be inclined to describe the God of the prophets as stern, arbitrary, inscrutable, even unaccountable. But the thought of God and indifference to other people’s suffering are mutually exclusive.
“
| — |
Abraham Heschel, “The Meaning and Mystery of Wrath,” The Prophets
|
I might have faith, but faith in faith….a whole other issue!
“
| — |
Kyle, one of my classmates and friends
|
When we teach “all men are brothers” by Daniel Erlander.
One of my classmates referred to bad doctrine as “dinosaur theology.”
I like it.
The preacher in his or her proper place [is] companion to the liturgy.
“
| — |
Charles Rice, “Preaching as a Liturgical Act”
|
A quote from preaching class.
We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone its value is incontestable.
Nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn’t go around this world with his fingers on triggers, his fists around knives, his hands on steering wheels. God is dead set against all unnatural deaths. …
The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is “It is the will of God.” Never do we know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.
“
| — |
Reverend William Sloane Coffin, at the funeral of his 24-year-old son. (Source: pbs.org)
|
