Companions in Suffering: Comfort for Times of Loss and Loneliness by Wendy Alsup

I recently finished reading Companions in Suffering: Comfort for Times of Loss and Loneliness by Wendy Alsup.
While I really enjoyed the entire book, these quotes in particular stood out to me.

"We don’t need to try to be the hero in our own story. God is the hero—we need only receive. And often God will use others as his hands and feet to provide exactly what we need. Receive from others, and as you do, you receive from the Lord."
(Kindle edition, location 62)

"In Luke 9 (and in Matthew 10:38-39 and Luke 14: 27), Jesus didn’t instruct his disciples to shake off the weight of their crosses in order to better serve him. Instead, he said to take up the weight and follow him anyway. Jesus invited his disciples to follow him, weights of suffering and all. And the rest of the New Testament presents suffering not as a rare event a few believers will experience but as the Christian norm as we live in faith in a world sorely affected by the fall."
(Kindle edition, location 215)

"Why is it that those who have not suffered intensely do not have enduring encouragement to offer those who have? Because, according to Paul, suffering itself is the conduit to the very ability to comfort."
(Kindle edition, location 455)

"Suffering feels keenly unfair when it seems to leave us paying the consequences of a sin someone else committed."
(Kindle edition, location 704)

"The first chapter of Job begins by pulling back the curtain in the heavens on a discussion occurring between God and Satan. From that discussion I gathered my first weapon against the prosperity gospel that sufferers must put to death. It is a nugget of sustaining truth every believing sufferer needs to know: You did not bring this on yourself."
(Kindle edition, location 1269)

"In grace our Father in heaven eternally preserved the story of Job for all who suffer in Christ today. God truly has not left us as orphans to walk our path of suffering alone. As we sit with Job in his tent of suffering and listen to his lament, we are freed from the dangerously deceptive heresy of the prosperity gospel that has us worshiping the gifts rather than the Giver."
(Kindle edition, location 1395)

"Job was a righteous man, and his suffering wasn’t because of his sin but to show the worthiness of God to Satan and the heavenly realm."
(Kindle edition, location 1398)

"This very perseverance in seasons of silence without seeing God’s solution is the essence of faith."
(Kindle edition, location 1815)

"When we have suffered in one area, I’m convinced we become more attuned to suffering in others."
(Kindle edition, location 2049)

"We should feel its cumulative effect as suffering outside us adds to the pain of the suffering inside us. This is natural. We were not created for divorce court, hospitals, or funeral homes. We should not make peace with them."
(Kindle edition, location 2051)


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