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Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive

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Russ Ramsey

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“Our sorrows are ultimately hallowed by the One who enters fully into the painful stories of our own lives in order to show us that our suffering matters, while also becoming the place from which the Spirit enables us to become agents of God’s healing grace to those who find themselves lost and alone in their griefs (p. xi)”

Suffering
Book:Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive
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“The goal of suffering well is to move us not only beyond the stick figures, but also from a place of pride to one of intimacy and familiarity with our Lord. It is to move us not from crude to eloquent, but from unfamiliar to intimate. This is why we practice spiritual disciplines (p. 50).”

Suffering
Book:Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive
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“From this moment, start looking at everything as a blessing. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Even when you sometimes feel pain it is a blessing. You may not understand, but it is a blessing. One day you will understand and you will see that it was a blessing, that it was needed, absolutely needed, that it helped your growth. Even suffering is a blessing. It cleanses, it helps you to become integrated, it takes away childishness, it helps you to become mature. A certain ripeness arises out of suffering. A man who has never suffered remains childish, juvenile, superficial. He can’t understand life’s deeper things. He thinks that life is just a merry-go-round, so he goes on moving from one sensation to another. He is continuously greedy and hankering for all kinds of toys. But they are toys. A man who has suffered enough becomes mature. He can see that toys are toys — not worth the labor, not worth the worry. He can understand the depth and can see other people’s lives with more sympathy, with more compassion, with more love. Because he has suffered, he knows what suffering is. That makes him more human. So suffering too is a blessing. Watch, observe and try to find a blessing everywhere. Sometimes it is in disguise and sometimes not so disguised, sometimes utterly nude. But if you watch, you will find it is always there; in success, in failure, in pain, in pleasure, in life, in death too. It is there in summer, it is there in winter, it is there in youth, it is there in old age. It is there in health, it is there in illness. I call that person religious who can see blessings everywhere, who cannot find any place, any point which is not a blessing.”

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Book:First in the Morning: 365 Uplifting Moments to Start the Day Consciously
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“Suffering strips away the self. This sounds terribly painful, and it is. But the meaning and object of suffering isn't pain; it is to learn to give and receive love. God isn't a sadist who delights in using agony to teach us a lesson. But in the alchemy of redemption, God can take what is only sorrow and transform it into the very path by which we learn to love God and let ourselves be loved. This is the strange (and usually unwanted) way of abundant life - the dying necessary to bring resurrection.”

LovePainSufferingRedemptionAbundant Life
Book:Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep
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“I face things every day, big and small, that are difficult but have not killed me. And I'm finding that what doesn't kill me actually makes me weaker, and maybe that's the point - that the way of glory is discovered through, and only through, the cross. In life's school of love, suffering - what doesn't kill us - makes us more alive to our need and helplessness and, therefore, more able to give and receive love.”

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Book:Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep
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