Suffering Quotes

My wife and I were present at this congress. Sabina told me, Richard, stand up and wash away this shame from the face of Christ! They are spitting in His face. I said to her, If I do so, you lose your husband. She replied, I don't wish to have a coward as a husband.

~ Richard Wurmbrand

We are not a voice for the voiceless. The truth is that there is a lot of noise out there drowning out quiet voices, and many people have stopped listening to the cries of their neighbors. Lots of folks have put their hands over their ears to drown out the suffering. Institutions have distanced themselves from the disturbing cries..It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream, and struggle. One of the verses I have grown to love is the one where Jesus is preparing to leave the disciples and says, I no longer call you servants.... Instead, I have called you friends (John 15:15). Servanthood is a fine place to begin, but gradually we move toward mutual love, genuine relationships. Someday, perhaps we can even say those words that Ruth said to Naomi after years of partnership: Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried (Ruth 1:16-17).

~ Shane Claiborne

May our afflictions be few, but may we learn not to squander them.

~ Scott Cairns

Experiencing grief and pain is like falling off a cliff. Everything has been turned upside down, and we are no longer in control. As we fall, we see one and only one tree that is growing out from the rock face. So we grab hold of it and cling to it with all our might. This tree is our holy God. He alone can keep us from falling headfirst to our doom. There simply aren’t any other trees to grab. So we cling to this tree (the holy God) with all our might.But what we didn’t realize is that when we fell and grabbed the tree our arm actually became entangled in the branches, so that in reality, the tree is holding us. We hold on to keep from falling, but what we don’t realize is that we can’t fall because the tree has us. We are safe. God, in his holiness, is keeping us and showing mercy to us. We may not be aware of it, but it is true. He is with us even in the deepest and darkest pit.

~ Dustin Shramek

Evil is the most difficult problem in the world. It is also the strongest objection to God’s existence. If God does exist, it is also the most problematic challenge to his nature and power. As a Christian, it is my greatest temptation for doubt and unbelief.

~ Jon Morrison

It is unjust, but only Christlike, to suffer persecution for doing what is right.

~ Joyce Rachelle

What does hanging on a cross for twenty-four hours mean to a man who has no children,' I said, 'especially when he knows he's dying for a good cause -- indeed, that he's saving the whole world and then going straight into the best place in Heaven? What's that compared to the suffering I've had to put up with for months and years with the house full of children, when for many whole nights I've shrieked with pain unceasingly and without relief, and I'll soon be dead, and that without having anything to die for; and there'll be no heavenly Kingdom for me, for I know the children will go on crying when I'm dead, and swearing and quarrelling, and begging for milk they can't get.

~ Halldór Laxness

Why would god allow the Holocaust to happen? If god made everything, why did he invent sin to trick us and then hold our sins against us? Why are there so many religions in the world if god created the world and wants us to be Christian? Why does god allow people to fight wars over him? What if you were born in a different culture and never even heard of Jesus Christ—would god send you to hell for not being Christian? And if so, do you believe that's fair? Why are men always the leaders in your church? Aren't women capable of leading too? Isn't such a patriarchal system sexist in this day and age? Why do so many babies die? Why are there so many poor people in the world? Did Jesus visit any other planets in distant unknown universes?

~ Matthew Quick

His face frankly displays his suffering, expressing it with a truly royal simplicity. At such moments even the very best people are apt to give themselves away with the kind of look which says to you more or less directly: 'You see how I'm sticking it out; don't praise me, it's my nature; thanks all the same.' But the Curé de Torcy looks straight at you, guilelessly. His eyes beg your compassion and sympathy. But with what nobility they beg! A king might beg in just that way.

~ Georges Bernanos

God's 'permission' of evil so multiplied is not simply to be accounted for by his respecting our free will. He takes the harms we mutually inflict and overrules them for our good.

~ Jocelyn Gibb

The primary function of mental pain, says Lewis, is to force our misdirectedness on our attention. But just as it belongs to our fallen state to be blind to holiness until we suffer the consequences of sin, and blind to a higher good until natural satisfactions are snatched from us; so equally it belongs to our state that we cannot achieve disinterestedness until it costs us pain.

~ Jocelyn Gibb

Man, to Lewis, is an immortal subject; pains are his moral remedies, salutary disciplines, willing sacrifices, playing their part in a drama of interchange between God and him.

~ Jocelyn Gibb

In a sense, [Christianity] creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving.

~ C.s. Lewis

This fits the pattern of how God responds to human suffering: We come looking for answers; God sends a hot meal through a warm body. WE come looking for reasons for our hunger; God sends provision to feed us. We come looking for a sermon that will explain the complexity of the cosmos to us and satiate our desire for understanding; Christ responds with, This is my body, given for you; this is my blood, shed for you.People try to offer us an explanation; God offers us a Eucharist.

~ Jonathan Martin

The Serpent, to my interpretation, was pain.

~ William Goldman

Pain is soul of re-birth.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Until the evil man finds evil unmistakably present in his existence, in the form of pain, he is enclosed in illusion.

~ C.s. Lewis

For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.

~ David Livingstone

Second Corinthians speaks concerning the ministry, which is constituted with, and produced and formed by, the experiences of the riches of Christ through sufferings, consuming pressures, and the killing work of the cross. The ministry is not merely a matter of gift. A person may be able to speak fluently and eloquently and give many good illustrations and proverbs, but this is just a gift. What the church, the Body, needs today is the ministry.

~ Witness Lee

Human is a suffered mind but an enlightened soul.

~ Santosh Kalwar

The soul that knows suffering, understand the grace of solitude.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The soul knows its sorrow.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

In suffering, the soul cries out!

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Suffering makes the soul search spirit.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

In deep of suffering, I found my soul.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

If ‘one’ really were the sufferer or the enjoyer, then he would get tired. But the Self in reality is not experiencing anything. He simply does egoism only.

~ Dada Bhagwan

Hardship is the hardest moment to soften the soul.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

In deep suffering, you know the sacred soul.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

A strong soul recovers from any suffering.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Sufferings lead a man to his soul.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

In suffering, I got to know my soul.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

In deep suffering, I got to know divinity within my soul.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

In suffering, the soul is stretch to find its full strength.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

In suffering, we resurrect our souls.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I live with the hope that one day, someone, will look into my eyes and see the deepness of my soul, and all the suffering and struggles will finally make sense to the person that can see behind all the imperfections and dust that's been pilled up in all these years. I've had my turns at trying to love people, but it never turned out as planned and I've failed in keeping someone next to me, simply because you can't force someone to be by your side if it's not meant to be, and I've grown to accept that and not fight against it. I've been selfish for far too long in trying to cling on to someone, and I believe nobody is perfect.. But as long as I still breathe, I'm willing to let people come into my life, play their part in my life's plan and then let go if it's necessary. Nothing can last forever and it's something we grow to accept. Let time do its' thing and don't get too attached, that's all I can do.

~ Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache

If I were to believe in God enough to call him a murderer, then I might also believe enough that he, as a spirit, exists beyond death; and therefore only he could do it righteously. For the physical being kills a man and hatefully sends him away, whereas God, the spiritual being, kills a man and lovingly draws him nigh.

~ Criss Jami

I guess he was right; I’m just a scorpion without wings,God created me this way, no wings, just a poisonous sting,The one I loved knew my true natureShe knew I could sting her heart, and poisoned her soul,My lover knew me well, she knew my truth,She could see my poisonous soul, My ego bowed to her beauty, always ready to strike She knew my true nature, she saw the scorpion,She saw the venom in heart, she loved me still,I struck her heart multiple times,I poisoned her soul with my sting,I guess he was right; I’m just a scorpion without wingsShe knew me well; she saw the lethal sting,She saw her wounded heart, she loved me stillShe you loved the scorpion to the end,She fell in love, and now she’s dead,The scorpion cries, in agony, He wishes he wasn’t a venomous beast,The scorpion suffers; he misses his loved one,The one he killed, the one he stung,The one who loved him to the end

~ Quetzal

Only when we face the impossible, and experience the unbearable, do we find out who we truly are.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

There is no greater suffering than constantly measuring yourself and coming up short, except perhaps the realization that your suffering is hurting others. But where do we learn these things? Because, really, they are learned. We don't come crying out of the womb because of our birth weight or because we have no money in this brand new world. We learn to measure and we learn to attach our self-worth to those measurements.These patterns we're stuck in aren't just painful for us, they're also distracting us. Every day, the gap between rich and poor grows while the people of developed societies do nothing, because we are too busy worrying about looking good. We're distracted, but not because we've chosen to be. Being distracted by our illusory inadequacy keeps us from changing the world. And believe me, we all have the power to change the world. If we only make the time. If we only free some head space.If you can't learn to love yourself for yourself (and how could you with such a paradoxical motivation?)... then do it for us. Do it for the world. We need you. We need your mind. We need your attention. We need your thoughts. Change your focus, and you will (not can, but will) change the world. You already matter. You just have to realize it for yourself.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

[…] Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole lifetime, it would still be incomplete. Perhaps, in this insatiable need for perpetuation, we should better understand human suffering, if we knew that it was eternal. It appears that great minds are, sometimes, less horrified by suffering than by the fact that it does not endure. In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day. One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness.

~ Albert Camus