SufferingDeuteronomy brings the Pentateuch and Moses’ life to their respective conclusions. These two important things are interrelated. Deuteronomy’s conclusion (34:1–12), in which Moses dies, is expected and yet odd. It is expected in that his upcoming death has been mentioned several times in the book. Several details in the conclusion mark it as odd, including…
SufferingSometimes death strikes down the living abruptly through a heart attack, a suicide, a car accident, a drowning. Loved ones can be left feeling stranded, breathless, and unprepared. In contrast, many forms of cancer operate in slow motion. Dying is protracted. Even if the process takes only weeks, patients and their loved ones observe and…
SufferingIn Packing Inferno, Iraq War veteran Tyler Boudreau describes his experience of going to war and of coming home
Suffering“No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear. I am not afraid, but I’m experiencing the sensation of being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.” “At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of…
SufferingEvery aspect of pastoral ministry can and should be viewed as an occasion for theological witness and reflection. Nowhere is that more important than in the face of death with the depth of the issues it raises and the intensity of the grief it provokes. The stark reality of death blows away our empty clichés…
SufferingIt is difficult for many of us to imagine John Calvin doing something so human and vulnerable as grieving. Nor is it any easier to picture him being interested in compassionate pastoral care to bereaved friends or to members of his flock. Often, our mental image of him is of a cold, academic man, interested…
SufferingThrough the despair and agony of life’s final moments, God’s command, “Thou may live,” resounds in the mind and heart of those flirting with ending their own lives. “The suicidal person hears this command as a light piercing the darkness, not as a command that she must live but as the good news that she…
