Topic: Suffering

When we respond to the call to model our lives on his life, the life of the One who has seen the Father, then, like him, we must not sidestep or avoid suffering.

The glory of God is most fully revealed in Jesus’s willingness to suffer death at the hands of the law.

We are prepared to sacrifice and kill in the name of our God, but God is willing to be sacrificed and be killed to save us, even when we were enemies.

Expecting God to always appear as an exalted triumphant  victor blinds us to the reality of God’s glory which is made known in suffering, self-sacrificial love.

While faith is a gift, blessings come to those who are prepared to wrestle with their faith.

The stories of Moses, Elijah and Jesus on various mountain tops reveals a process of God’s self-revelation as the one who loves us and suffers for us.

Jesus is the “Lamb of God”, a sacrifice offered by God to appease and expose the sin of the world – the sacrificial monster of human blame-shifting and scapegoating.

When we follow Christ in being pain-bearers, we are participating in the reconciliation of the world.

God meets us in the midst of our worst nightmares, calling life out of death, but seldom in the ways we might most wish for.

Salvation is about being set free to live life in all its fulness, even in the midst of conflict and suffering.

The vision of the Trinity reveals some of the most important characteristics of God: radical mutual love, radically open hospitality, and transformative engagement with the suffering of the world.

Jesus calls us to love and care for the world’s victims, and to refuse to participate in making more of them (even from among the victimisers).