The Answer to Our Suffering

Suffering. Who wants to talk about it? Yet who doesn’t want an answer to their own suffering? The surprise of the New Testament is that no final, explicit answer is given for our own individual pains and tragedies. The answer presented instead is something unexpected: the suffering Jesus.  Crucifixion is probably the cruelest way to […]

After Christmas—A Glimmer of Heaven

For some, the days after Christmas can be a letdown. The presents are opened and the feasts are finished. But for me and my family, it was anything but a letdown. What we all felt was a glimmer of heaven. Here’s what happened. My oldest daughter got married right after Christmas, and it was an added thrill for […]

The Joy Of Death: A Final Look

This weekend I spoke the benediction at the funeral of a dear friend. Two days later I ate lunch with another friend who recently lost his spouse to cancer. Both experiences still taste of death, the stripping finality, the grinding loss, the unappeasable loneliness. How could anyone associate death with joy? Isn’t this something approaching […]

The joy of death

I watched my mother die of terminal cancer a number of years ago. It was ugly and heart-wrenching. I know of others right now who are facing death’s door, and it’s grievous to consider. How could anything good come out of death, much less joy? When I was in college, I read a book called The […]