Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

What If All This Is Only The Beginning Flicker

What If All This Is Only The Beginning Flicker

What if all this is the beginning flicker of your existence?

What if this is not the end?

What if every tear has been noticed?

That your pain and suffering – your life –  was not meaningless.

What if ethics are at play, and everything you do matters forever.

If so, the implications are breathtaking.

God knows that one day soon He will take us out of suffering, He knows that what He can take us to will be a state of great joy, and He knows that from the perspective of eternity the proportion of our lives that we will spend amid suffering will be remembered as a “flicker” at the very outset of our existence.

-Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale, Why Suffering?

Absent Pain And Suffering, We Lose Greatness

Absent Pain And Suffering, We Lose Greatness
Did you ever think that absent pain and suffering in the world, we would lose much of our ability to be great?

I think this is probably true.

I mean:

Just please, don’t ever expect to understand everything.

You probably won’t.

Why would you assume that you would?

Without the possibility of suffering, practically every great true story in history would be false. No one would ever have made a significant sacrifice for anyone else. No great moments of forgiveness and reconciliation. No opportunities to stand for justice against injustice. No compassion (because nothing to be compassionate about); no courage (because no dangerous situations requiring courage); no heroes. No such thing as “lay[ ing] down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15: 13).

-Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale, Why Suffering?

Sterling Terrell