“After his wife died, in great pain C. S. Lewis realized, “If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came.”3 Our own suffering is often our wake-up call. But even if you aren’t now facing it, look around and you’ll see many who are....Suffering and evil exert a force that either pushes us away from God or pulls us toward him....Unfortunately, most evangelical churches—whether traditional, liturgical, or emergent—have failed to teach people to think biblically about the realities of evil and suffering. A pastor’s daughter told me, “I was never taught the Christian life was going to be difficult. I’ve discovered it is, and I wasn’t ready.”...On the other side of death, the Bible promises that all who know him will fall into the open arms of a holy, loving, and gracious God—the greatest miracle, the answer to the problem of evil and suffering. He promises us an eternal kingdom on the New Earth, where he says of those who come to trust him in this present world of evil and suffering, “They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:3–4)”

“Worry is momentary atheism crying out for correction by trust in a good, sovereign God. Suffering breaks self-reliance.”

“God prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving.”

“Many [Western Christians] habitually think and act as if there is no eternity. . . . We major in the momentary and minor in the momentous.”

“In the silence punctuated only by their footsteps, both men thought not of themselves but of a Man who once made a long,lonely march up a hill, who in the world's worst hour did the most courageous thing ever done.At the end of His climb,He spread out His arms and permitted guilty men to drive nails into His hands and feet. He endured untold agony to give undeserving men- like Mike Hollis, Derrick Freeman, Nathan Hayes, and Adam Mitchell- a second chance.To most people none of this - not what these men were doing now, nor what He did two thousand years ago-made sense.From the outside, grace and truth,honor and courage,seldom do.”

“Jesus' miracles provide us with a sample of the meaning of redemption: a freeing of creation from the shackles of sin and evil and a reinstatement of creaturely living as intended by God.”

“Yanked out of the present, Adam discovered the richness of the past in people's stories.”

“We are all theologians, either good ones or bad ones. I'd rather be a good one. Wouldn't you?”

“He opened the first letter, No "Dear Mr. Woods." It was a page full of profanities. There was something oddly refreshing about honest, to-the-point hate mail. No hypocrisy and forced politeness. Too many letters ripped you to shreds, then closed off 'Sincerely yours.”

“For the Christian, death is not the end of adventure but a doorway from a wold where dreams and adventures shrink, to a world where dreams and adventures forever expand.”

“The most tragic strain in human existence lies in the fact that the pleasure which we find in the things of this life, however good that pleasure may be in itself, is always taken away from us. The things for which men strive hardly ever turn out to be as satisfying as they expected, and in the rare cases in which they do, sooner or later they are snatched away.... For the Christians, all those partial, broken and fleeting perfections which he glimpses in the world around him, which wither in his grasp and he snatches away from him even while the wither, are found again, perfect, complete and lasting in the absolute beauty of God.”