Tag Archives: Suffering

A Grandfather’s Blessing

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Earlier this month the world lost an incomparable storyteller. Walter Wangerin Jr., who had been a professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana since 1991, was the author of more than 30 novels.  He also wrote numerous children’s stories, essays and plays, not to mention scores of sermons from his days as a Lutheran pastor. Wangerin was especially focused on the… Read more »

Signs of Life

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Throughout July we’re taking an in-depth look at Proverbs, the Bible’s one-of-a-kind book about our never-ending need for wisdom. On May 18, 1980, Mt. St. Helens blew its top. In less than 15 minutes one of America’s most beautiful landscapes was dramatically reconfigured. A lateral blast of molten rock, ash, and debris devastated 151,000 acres of forest and recreational areas… Read more »

Good Bad

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“The Lrod is naer to the broknehreated and svaes the crsuehd in siprit.” (Psalm 34:18) If you copy the words above as written, your spell-checker will throw a hissy fit. What’s interesting is that our brains have no problem making sense of them.  Researchers at Cambridge have confirmed that as long as the first letter is first and the last… Read more »

Pain and Hope

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In 1898, a German scientist believed he had discovered the Holy Grail of pain relief. Heinrich Dreser, who worked as a chemist for Bayer – the corporation that had created a remarkable new drug called aspirin – was hoping to synthesize a painkiller that wouldn’t lead to addiction. The world had long known about morphine, the powerful, naturally-occurring opioid.  But… Read more »

The Scream

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Journalist Arthur Lubow called it “an icon of modern art, a Mona Lisa for our time.” If The Scream is representative of the spirit of our age, then we live in a deeply unsettling period of history.     The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch never concealed his insecurities.  His mother died of tuberculosis when he was five.  His favorite sister Sophie… Read more »

The Final Freedom

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Viktor Frankl yearned to make a contribution to humanity. As a respected young psychiatrist in Vienna before World War II, he had meticulously prepared the manuscript for a book that he dared to believe might help change the world.  Since he and his wife were not yet parents, he called it “my mental child.”  Then the Nazis came to power. … Read more »

Wrestling with God

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The more time you spend with God, the more likely you are at some point to wrestle with God. Spoiler alert: You will lose that wrestling match.  But there’s a good chance you will end up with a souvenir from the encounter that will be well worth keeping. The prototypical divine-human wrestling match is reported in Genesis 32:22-32, which has… Read more »

Needing Your Past

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In his 1970 book Habitation of Dragons, Keith Miller tells about a memorable conversation in a small group of adults who were struggling to learn how to follow Jesus. As part of a get-acquainted exercise, each member shared something about his or her childhood.  Miller writes: “One older lady had had a good many disappointments and seemed bitter about her past. … Read more »

Looking Back

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During the summer I turned 10 years old, I was on top of the world. I played lots of softball.  I was even asked to be the starting pitcher in my league’s All-Star Game. Our family took a memorable road trip.  It culminated in a visit to Mammoth Cave, which launched my lifelong love of spelunking.  As a kid who… Read more »

What Child is This?

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Father Gregory Boyle is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, a widely acclaimed gang intervention program. It’s a ministry that involves considerable heartache.  As of 2017 and the release of his book Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship, Boyle had presided at the funerals of 220 gang members, most of whom had died… Read more »