Hi Everyone!I hope you all are recovering from Thanksgiving and settling back into work and life after Thanksgiving. This past week was absolutely wonderful, I once again was able to go home and visit my family, friends and my boyfriend. I will post again with details about the weekend but I want to first share with you a few wise words I heard and resonated with at church last sunday....
The sermon was centered on the questions, "how do we respond to the suffering in the world today?" And touched on answering the ever present inquiry, "Why does an all-loving God allow suffering in our world?" I find myself easily asking these questions when I spend nights caring for 30 year olds, 20 year olds, young mothers, and old fathers dying of cancer; however, I've always maintained an outlook that I can always learn and grow from such situations. The sermon highlighted the same central message: God brings suffering into our lives to strengthen and develop our faith, character , heart and soul. While sometimes difficult to see, there is always something to learn and grow from in our (and other's) suffering. Time again I talk to patients, many of whom only have months to live, who explain the closeness of their family during the illness, how broken ties were healed, how they ministered to other people with cancer, they explain that through this tragedy they were actually seeing progress, well being and fulfillment.
CS Lewis once said, "God whispers in our pleasures and shouts in our pain--it is a megaphone to a deaf world." It is more obvious to me than ever why suffering has a place in our world and in our heart...without it growth, development and subsequent joy and fulfillment is difficult to attain.
In the past four months I have grown, developed and felt more fulfilled than any other time in my life; I also have never experienced such hardship, adversity and overall suffering. It seems paradoxical but I continually thank God for bringing these extremely challenging situations full of brokenness into my life--for without them, neither myself, nor the people involved, would have such fulfillment, strength and joy in life.
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"Love is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves." --Teilhand de Chaardin
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