Topic: Suffering

As the victim of the ultimate in human evil, the risen Christ is the One who can offer the complete forgiveness, to us, and through us to the rest of the world.

God invites us to be immersed in another possible reality, to look at the world with the dark and contrary light that comes from the cross of Jesus.

Christ crucified is both a sign of the ultimate consequence of evil, and of the ultimate victory of Christ over evil through the power of suffering love.

Lent can be a dark night filled with tears and mourning and loss, but it is worth it, for God’s joy comes in the morning.

The hope that empowers us to maintain our counter-cultural obedience to Christ, is that the One who will eventually rule over all is the One who offers himself as a suffering servant of all.

The only thing which proves to be worth anything at all, the only thing that proves able to continually redeem our lives from the brink is faith in the crucified and risen one.

Faced with the callous injustice of the world, it takes tenacious trust in the vision of God’s just reign to survive.

The faith of Christ is about the redemptive power of wounds, so love your wound and befriend it, for it is probably an angel of God in disguise.

When the world falls apart, God recognises the pain, the despair, and the anger, and gifts us with faith, with an assurance that God’s power of love will yet prevail, that God will accomplish the justice and the peace we long for.

Following Christ may take us into costly confrontation with the powers of the world, and we cannot be protected from the costs of that, but Christ will bring us through to the land of promise beyond.

Our worship is a part of a cosmic liturgy of praise to the One who was slaughtered in reconciling a suffering universe to God.

Locating our struggles within the bigger picture of God’s purposes can give hope and purpose, but it also places us in a challenging place of priestly mission.