Hugel: the solution from within

Saturday, November 10, 2018
    Feast of Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461
Meditation:
    We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing. Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering.
    —2 Thessalonians 1:3-5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    How wonderful it is, is it not, that literally only Christianity has taught us the true peace and function of suffering. The Stoics tried the hopeless little game of denying its objective reality, or of declaring it a good in itself (which it never is), and the Pessimists attempted to revel in it, as a food to their melancholy, and as something that can no more be transformed than it can be avoided or explained. But Christ came, and He did not really explain it; He did far more: He met it, willed it, transformed it, and He taught us how to do all this, or rather He Himself does it within us, if we do not hinder the all-healing hands.
    ... Friedrich von Hügel (1852-1925), Selected Letters, 1896-1924, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1928, p. 228 (see the book)
    See also 2 Thess. 1:3-5; Luke 24:44-45; John 18:11; Jas. 1:2-4; 5:11
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have redeemed the suffering in my life. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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