“The only thing suffering teaches us is that we are capable of suffering.”

“All believers in Christ, the Scripture teaches, will suffer-all of us. You will be glorified, Paul says, if you suffer with him. The problem with too many of us is not that we don't suffer, but that we assume that only Third World Christians or heroic missionaries are suffering. My boys didn't know that they were suffering in Russia; they would feel it as suffering now.”

“To be grounded in an attitude of compassion is to be capable of receiving and welcoming the suffering, which the other is giving us. This does not mean that we suffer for them, but that we offer them possibility of going beyond the separate self in which suffering is harbored. (59)”

“I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering, umfundisi. For our Lord suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering. For he knew that there is no life without suffering.”

“It isn't the things that happen to us in our lives that cause us to suffer, it's how we relate to the things that happen to us that causes us to suffer.”

“Suffering is universal; how we react to suffering is individual. Suffering can...be a strengthening and purifying experience combined with faith, or it can be a destructive force in our lives if we do not have the faith in the Lord’s atoning sacrifice. The purpose of suffering... is to build and strengthen us. We learn... obedience by the things we suffer. We should be humbled and drawn to the Lord.”