It is in fact cold comfort to say to a heart-broken person whose only child has been killed or whose husband has been fearfully injured, “This is not God’s doing or God’s will; we live in a disordered world in which evil has been let loose; we must expect these things where sin reigns; but keep trusting God.” How infinitely more comforting, more biblical and more glorifying to God it is to say with Amos in defiant faith: “If disaster falls has not the Lord been at work” (Amos 3:6).
— John Wenham (1913–1996), Bibelwissenschaftler
Related Bible passage: AMO.3.6
Topics: Suffering & the Question of God, Guidance & God's Will, Faith & Trust
Occasions: For Reflection
John Wenham
John Wenham (1913–1996) war ein englischer anglikanischer Theologe und Bibelwissenschaftler, der an der Tyndale Hall in Bristol und am Latimer House in Oxford lehrte. Bekannt wurde er durch sein weitverbreitetes Lehrbuch des neutestamentlichen Griechisch sowie durch Schriften zur historischen Zuverlässigkeit und Harmonisierung der Evangelienberichte. Für heutige Bibelleser bleibt er als Sprachlehrer und Apologet von Bedeutung, stieß jedoch im konservativen Raum wegen seines Eintretens für den Annihilationismus und der Ablehnung ewiger Höllenstrafen auf deutliche Kritik.
In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.
Henri Nouwen
Ultimately mourning means facing what wounds us in the presence of One who can heal.
Henri Nouwen
C.S. Lewis
When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.
Henri Nouwen
He has chosen not to heal me, but to hold me. The more intense the pain, the closer His embrace.
Joni Eareckson Tada
Etty Hillesum
God writes straight even on crooked lines.
Paul Claudel
God lets us walk no path that he himself has not walked, and on which he does not go ahead of us.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer