Do not look at a problem but look at God to solve it. Your feelings that God is standing with you in your difficulties will give you hope and strength.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life
Category: SUFFERING
-
Tomorrow is Better for You
Don’t live in your present day if it is too wearisome for you, but live for your tomorrow.
In this tomorrow see the hand of God reaching out to you to calm you.
And on the morrow you will see many solutions to your problems.If your today is dark, then your tomorrow will open before you windows of light.
The Saints lived for their tomorrows, for their eternity, and hung all their hopes upon it.
David lived for his tomorrow when Saul was pursuing him. And so did Jonah when he was in the belly of the fish…
Joseph lived for his tomorrow when he was in prison and so did his father Jacob when he was fleeing from Esau, trusting that God would restore him from his exile…
If things become problematic for you, say to yourself that they will be solved tomorrow.
Then smile and live for that tomorrow…
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life -
It is very important for every Christian to realize that our sorrows are all sent in accordance with God’s will, which is always good and redemptive. In fact, most often they are sent not as punishments for our sins but to set aright our path and our hearts or as the answer to a request we have made of God. People often expect God to give them what they have asked for in their prayers in the way that they themselves think is best. But God often answers their supplications in a way that is entirely different from what they would have wanted or imagined.
They might ask, for example, for God to grant them humility, imagining that slowly, day by day, it will grow in their heart through the beneficent influence of God. But the Lord often does things differently: He will send them an unexpected, harsh blow that wounds their pride and egotism and humbles them. The Lord will often send us an illness and we complain and don’t think that most often this is a great blessing from God. It may be God’s answer to prayers in which we have asked Him to strengthen our faith.
We have to accept all the trials and sorrows that God sends us with great humility and without the slightest complaint, in the humble conviction that, through them, God is guiding us, rather than that His wrath has come upon us. There is no wrath in God. “God is love”. And perfect love is a stranger to any form of injustice’.
—St. Luke the Surgeon -
“Ordinarily we experience no pain when the soul is sick, yet on the contrary when the body is troubled we use every means possible to relieve that trouble. For this very reason God afflicts the body because of the sins of the soul, in order to restore health to man’s most noble aspect by making use of the least noble affliction.”
—St. John Chrysostom
via The Theology of Illness by Jean-Claude Larchet -
“Don’t believe you have any virtue if it hasn’t caused you pain to acquire it. That’s a false virtue, since it was born out of comfort.”
—Saint Mark the Ascetic -
A lot of the suffering that comes from our experience arises because we can’t help but compare it to another moment in time. In my own case, it was because I was arbitrarily using the marker of a year to make judgments about how I should’ve been feeling.
I felt that this year should be as good as or better than last year. Not only is it pointless to make the comparison, but it’s impossible to do so accurately. When we’re told to be present and not focus too heavily on the past or the future, it’s not only practical advice, it’s rational advice; our ideas about time are incredibly skewed and often dictated in large part by our emotional state in that moment.
What It Means to Live Life with Open Palms and How This Sets Us Free
Benjamin Fishel -
“If we only could realize that there is no evil in a person that is not at the same time a suffering in this person.”
— Met. Anthony Bloom -
There are virtues of the body and virtues of the soul. Those of the body include fasting, vigils, sleeping on the ground, ministering to people’s needs, working with one’s hands so as not to be a burden or in order to give to others (cf. 1 Thess. 2:9, Ephes. 4:28). Those of the soul include love, long-suffering, gentleness, self-control, and prayer (cf. Gal, 5:22). If as a result of some constraint or bodily condition, such as illness or the like, we find we cannot practice the bodily virtues mentioned above, we are forgiven by the Lord because He knows the reasons. But if we fail to practice the virtues of the soul, we shall not have a single excuse, for it is always within our power to practice them.
—St Maximos the Confessor, Four Hundred Texts on Love
SO GOOD QUOTES 