Comfort In Sorrow

Wordsworth

The capacity to cry out our pain causes health to come.

Walther Brueggemann

READING A GREETING SERIES

A deep distress has humanized my soul.

COMFORT

IN SORROW Your Way To Recover

On the occasion of ...............................................................................................................................

From ...............................................................................................................................

Date ...............................................................................................................................

Comfort in Sorrow: Your Way to Recovery Copyright Š 1998, 2014 by Ben Alex A co-production from Scandinavia Publishing House, Drejervej 15, 3. DK-2400 Copenhagen NV, Denmark info@scanpublishing.dk Scripture quotations are taken from The New International Bible.

Used by permission Printed in China ISBN 9788771324792

Also in this series: A New Beginning: Celebrating Your New Opportunity Carpe Diem: Today Is Your Day Closer Than a Sister: The Gift of Friendship

COMFORT

IN SORROW Your Way To Recovery

By Ben Alex

Holy ground “Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.”

Sorrow

-OSCAR WILDE

is the price tag that God has placed on things of great worth. When pain and suffering hit, we can choose to ignore them, rationalize them, and deny them, or we can choose to accept and process them through grief. Only by accepting our sufferings will we reap the fruit of sorrow. Only by processing our grief will we experience lasting change, everlasting joy, and true redemption.

Jesus was “a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering” according to Isaiah 53:3. And although he experienced deep affliction on earth, he never succumbed to his sufferings. Instead, he raised them to a higher plane, to holy ground, thereby redeeming mankind and creation. For, continues Isaiah, “it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,” and in this “suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied.”

George MacDonald once said that Jesus did not only die to take away our suffering; he died so our sufferings could become like his. To be a believer means to carry one’s cross in the footsteps of Jesus, to suffer and grieve so that change and joy may come. In this way, we as believers partake in God’s redemptive work on earth.

It is a false gospel that offers only prosperity and happiness. God never promised such things without the cost of suffering. Søren Kierkegaard,

-4-

the great Christian philosopher who himself suffered deeply and has mapped the experience of suffering, said that there are three kinds of people: First, those so bereft of spirituality that they cling to this life and thereby waste eter­nal life; second, those who retain some spirituality but take offense of their suf­ferings and rebel against God; and third, those who encounter their sufferings and still trust in God’s supreme love. Only these are ripe for eternity. “What truly pleases God,” says Kierkegaard, “is a man who, as his time is running out, when God, as it were, transforms Himself into absolute cruelty and with the most cruelly planned cruelty does everything to rob him of any inclination to live, yet persists in believing that God is love, that God is doing it all to him out of love.”

“Like the man,” continues Kierkegaard, “who took it into his head to search across the world for a singer with a perfect pitch, so God sits in heaven and listens. And every time He hears a human being extol Him, someone He has brought to the extremes of taedium vitae [misery], God says to Himself, ‘Ah, here it is. There is the tone!’ as though He were making a discovery; and yet He was prepared for it, for He Himself was present and close to this human being and helped him.”

As you read this book, you will recognize the tone. Hum it, sing it, and put your own lyrics to it. Make this song your own that you may find comfort in your sorrow.

-5-

Pain

PAIN IS THE PRICE THAT GOD PUTTETH UPON ALL THINGS.

-James Howell

NO PAIN, NO palm; no thorns, no throne; No CROSS, NO CROWN.

-William Penn

NOTHING begins, and nothing ends that IS NOT PAID WITH MOAN; FOR WE ARE BORN IN OTHERS’ PAIN, AND PERISH IN OUR OWN.

-Francis Thompson -6-

Self - knowledge No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

-C.S. Lewis

PAIN IS THE ROOT OF KNOWLEDGE.

-Simone Weil

SORROW MAKES US WISE.

-Tennyson

A DEEP DISTRESS HATH HUMANIZED MY SOUL.

-Wordsworth

I am certain that I never did grow in grace one-half so much anywhere as I have upon the bed of pain.

-Charles Spurgeon

PEOPLE VERY SELDOM DIE BECAUSE THEY LOST SOMEONE. I BELIEVE THEY DIE MORE OFTEN BECAUSE THEY HAVEN’T HAD SOMEONE.

-Colette

-7-

Past sorrow PAIN IS NO LONGER PAIN WHEN IT IS PAST.

-Margaret Junkin Preston

PAST sorrows, LET US MODERATELY LAMENT THEM: FOR THOSE TO COME, SEEK WISELY TO PREVENT THEM.

-John Webster

THERE IS NO DAY WITHOUT SORROW.

-Seneca I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.

-C.S. Lewis

SILENCE IS NO CERTAIN TOKEN THAT NO SECRET GRIEF IS THERE. SORROW WHICH IS NEVER SPOKEN IS THE HEAVIEST LOAD TO BEAR.

-Frances Ridley Havargal -9-

Temptation LITTLE GRIEFS MAKE US tender, great ONES MAKE US HARD.

-Longfellow

PAIN IS NO EVIL UNLESS IT CONQUER US.

-Charles Kingsley

For one drop calls another down, till we are drowned in seas of grief.

-Isaac Watts

WHEN PAIN CANT BLESS, HEAVEN QUITS US IN DESPAIR.

-Edward Young

GRIEF MAY BE JOY MISUNDERSTOOD.

-E. B. Browning

SORROW IS A KIND OF RUST OF THE SOUL.

-Samuel Johnson -10-

Patience HE THAT LACKS TIME TO mourn, LACKS TIME TO MEND.

-Sir Henry Taylor WE COULD never LEARN TO BE BRAVE AND patient if THERE WERE ONLY JOY IN THE WORLD.

-Helen Keller SORROW AND sighing will flee away.

-Isaiah 35:10

-11-

Silence THERE IS NO GRIEF LIKE THE GRIEF WHICH DOES NOT SPEAK.

-Longfellow

GREAT SOULS SUFFER IN SILENCE.

-Friedrich Schiller

HE GRIEVES SINCERELY WHO GRIEVES UNSEEN.

-Martial

LIGHT GRIEFS CAN speak, but DEEPER ONES ARE DUMB.

-Seneca

TRUE SORROW MAKES A SILENCE IN THE HEART.

-Robert Nathan

BE STILL BEFORE THE LORD AND WAIT PATIENTLY FOR HIM.

-Psalm 37:7 12-

-13-

Dignity

SOME MEN ARE ABOVE GRIEF AND SOME BELOW IT.

-Emerson

THERE’S DIGNITY IN suffering, nobility in pain, BUT FAILURE IS A SALTED WOUND THAT BURNS AND BURNS AGAIN.

-Margery Eldridge Howell

-14-

Healing EARTH HAS NO SORROW THAT HEAVEN cannot heal.

-Thomas Moore

GRIEF IS ITSELF A MEDICINE.

-William Cowper

THE CAPACITY TO CRY OUT OUR PAIN CAUSES HEALTH TO COME.

-Walter Brueggeman

Though grief may reach to the roots of our souls, it must not result in bitterness. Grief is a legitimate emotion, at times even a virtue, but there must be no place in the soul for bitterness.

-R.C. Sproul

I HAVE HEARD YOUR PRAYER AND SEEN YOUR tears; I WILL HEAL YOU.

-2 Kings 20:5 -15-

Tears I THANK THEE FOR THE GRACIOUS GIFT OF TEARS!

-T.B. Aldrich

WHAT POETRY THERE IS IN HUMAN TEARS!

-Henrich Heine

We rejoice in spite of our grief, not in place of it.

-Woodrow Kroll

Tears are a tribute to our deceased friends.

-Matthew Henry

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

-Harriet Beecher Stowe

WEEPING may stay for the night, BUT REJOICING COMES IN THE MORNING.

-Psalm 30:5 -15-

Joy

BLESSED ARE YOU WHO WEEP NOW, FOR YOU WILL LAUGH.

-Luke 6:21 THERE IS A CERTAIN JOY IN WEEPING. FOR BY TEARS GRIEF IS SATED AND RELIEVED.

-Ovid THOSE WHO HAVE KNOWN GRIEF SELDOM SEEM SAD.

-Benjamin Disraeli -16-

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Pleasure We, by our sufferings, learn TO PRIZE OUR BLISS.

-Dryden

Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain.

-John Selden

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

2 Corinthians 4:17

THE MORE PERFECT THE thing, the more deeply it feels pleasure, and ALSO PAIN.

-Dante

PAIN PAST IS pleasure, AND EXPERIENCE COMES BY IT. -C.H. Spurgeon

-19-

Compassion A LADY ASKED ME WHY ON MOST OCCASIONS I WORE BLACK. “ARE YOU mourning?”

“YES.” “FOR WHAT ARE YOU MOURNING?” “FOR THE WORLD.”

-Edith Sitwell

(God) comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

-2 Corinthians 1:4

IT IS ONLY THE WOMEN WHOSE EYES HAVE BEEN WASHED CLEAR WITH TEARS WHO GET THE BROAD VISION THAT MAKES THEM LITTLE SISTERS TO ALL THE WORLD.

-Dorothy Dix

MOURN WITH THOSE WHO MOURN.

-Romans12:15 -20-

Fellowship IT IS GOOD TO HAVE companions IN MISERY.

-John Gower MEN die, but sorrow never dies.

THE CROWDING YEARS DIVIDE IN vain, and the wide world IS KNIT WITH TIES OF COMMON BROTHERHOOD IN PAIN.

-Susan Coolidge THERE IS A SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP IN SUFFERING WHICH UNITES MEN AND WOMEN AS NOTHING ELSE CAN. PERHAPS IT WILL BE BY THE WORLD足WIDE MEMBERS OF THIS Ffellowship, in which those whom we call our enemies share, that THE TEMPLE OF civilization WILL BE REBUILT WHEN PEACE RETURNS.

-Vera Brittain -21-

Looking beyond Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

-Psalm 30:5b

GRIEF SHOULD NOT EXCEED PROPER BOUNDS BUT SHOULD BE IN PROPORTION TO THE BLOW.

-Juvenal

It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.

-Ecclesiastes 7:2

SING AWAY SORROW.

-Cervantes

IF YOU WOULD HAVE ME WEEP, YOU MUST FIRST FEEL GRIEF YOURSELF.

-Horace -22-

Looking beyond

THE PATH OF sorrow and that path alone, leads TO THE LAND WHERE SORROW IS UNKNOWN.

-William Cowper

The spirit of mourning was taken from me, and I knew what it was to truly rejoice in God my Savior.

-George Whitefield -24-

Looking beyond