Where can anxious people find comfort when the news is bad and the world feels unsteady? Stephen Eyre opens a series on the Heidelberg Catechism with its first question, its structure and the “saving sovereignty” of God, with questions for discussion.
Is there a difference between pain and suffering, and does the gospel say anything to it? C. Ben Mitchell classifies the kinds of suffering, grounds a theology of suffering in the fall and in the hope of the world to come, and asks what the church must do for the dying.
How does a believer give thanks in the middle of a long and terminal illness? Deborah and Lyle Thorpe’s prayer of thanksgiving and praise, drawn from Scripture, rests in God’s sovereign care and fixes its eyes on the unseen things that last forever.
Who is able to stand when the seals are broken? Mark Atkinson walks through Revelation 6 and 7, from the four horsemen and the martyrs under the altar to the sealed servants of God, and shows that the Lamb is in control of every calamity.
What do you say to a mother whose baby has died before birth? Leah Lebec tells the day her son was stillborn and the long grief that followed, and finds in it a deeper sense of how fiercely God loves each human life.
What can the western church learn about pluralism from Christians who have always lived as a minority? Scott Sunquist, a former missionary in Singapore, argues from Asian experience that the identity of Jesus, suffering and bold witness belong together.
Why do we say we want to die with dignity? Frederica Mathewes-Green asks where Scripture promises dignity in death, and points to Christ’s undignified road to the cross as the answer to our fear of dying out of control.
Why did God let this happen? Pastor M. Craig Barnes says the myth of personal wholeness has made suffering an accusation, and he reads the missing fruit in Eden as a picture of what it means to be a thankful creature rather than a creator.
Why would a loving God allow pain? James Edwards works through C.S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain and argues that tribulation is the terrible necessity by which God draws a rebel will out of self-sufficiency and back to himself.
What does it mean to be baptized into Christ’s death when a friend is dying of cancer? Shirley Smith argues that baptism promises suffering as well as new life, and that only the cross can give pain a meaning that theology and therapy cannot.