Reflection Options  

Journal  (reflect on one or more of these questions)

• Which disturbs you the most: the suffering you see in the world at large or the suffering you see in your own life/someone you care about? What do you wish could be done about that suffering?  How different is what you wish from what you understand God’s ultimate wish to be?

• Recall a time you faced pain or suffering in your life and ended up experiencing growth or maturity from it.  What helped you to get to a place of growth and not bitterness?  If you were not able to get to a place of growth, what do you think held you back?

• Think of as many ways as you can that Jesus suffered while on earth.  Why do you think the Father allowed the Son (Jesus) to suffer so much?  Do you think God still suffers in some way? If not, why not?

Quote Interaction (Interact by agreeing, disagreeing or otherwise engaging with the quote/quotes)

• “Hatred is not a creative force. Love alone creates. Suffering will not prevail over us, it will only melt us down and strengthen us.”  -- St. Maximilian Kolbe

• “Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves.” ~Joni Eareckson Tada in The God I Love

• "But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." --C.S. Lewis

• "I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the worlds finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened." Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov

• "The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt." --Thomas Merton

• "You may never know that JESUS is all you need, until JESUS is all you have." --Corrie Ten Boom

• "As cold as everything looks in winter, the sun has not forsaken us. He has only drawn away for a little, for good reasons, one of which is that we may learn that we cannot do without him." --George MacDonald

Reading & Reflection from the book, Shaping The Journey of Emerging Adults: 

• Read the short stories of the 7 young adults at the beginning of chapter 10 (pp. 164-166).  Each of them are suffering (or are about to) in some way.  Consider the source of the suffering each of them faces.  Possible options: as a consequence of their own choices, wounds from someone else’s choice that has affected them, suffering for Christ, a combination of those things or?  How does the source of suffering affect the way we approach our suffering?

• Read “Wanted: Spiritual Risk-Takers” (pp. 205-206).  How have you been affected by the “promise” of an easy or soft life?   How do you make sense of the Ernest Shackleton true life example?

• Read “A Mission Critical Urgency” (pp. 15-16).  What has been your experience of the necessity of pain, disillusionment or disappointment in growing into adulthood?

• MENTOR:  Read “Leaning into Pain and Brokenness” (pp. 231-234).  When do you feel tempted to ignore or hide your brokenness as a mentor? How can leaning into your pain and brokenness be a positive thing for the mentor relationship?