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• "In the deepest suffering, many find it almost impossible to pray. Should not the rest of us intercede for them? DA Carson, How Long O Lord
• "The Arabians have a proverb which says, "He is the best orator who can turn men's ears into eyes." - A description of George Whitfield's preaching
• "The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children of this warth as can on ehumna being broken on the wheels of living... In love's service only wounded soldiers can serve." excerpt from Thornton Wilder's play - The Angel that Troubled the Waters.
• "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all times you can, by all the means you can, as long as you can." John Wesley
• "Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve, you don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second law of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. " Martin Luther King
• "Suffering attracts fixers the way road-kills attract vultures." Eugene H. Peterson - Job - The Message (the point is - stop trying to fix the suffering so quickly and see why God has put you in this trial through prayer and worship)
• Responding to those suffering - - - 1. No matter how insightful we may be, we don't really understand the full nature of our friends' problems. 2. Our friends may not want our advice. 3. Ironically, more often than not, people do not suffer less when they are committed to God, but more." Eugene H. Peterson - Job - The Message
• "Instead of continuing to focus on preventing suffering - which we simply won't be very successful at anyway - perhaps we should begin entering the suffering, participating insofar as we are able - entering the mystery and looking around for God. In other words, we need to quit feeling sorry for people who suffer and instead look up to them, learn from them, and - if they let us - join them in protest and prayer. Pity can be nearsighted and condescending; shared suffering can be dignifying and life-changing. As we look at Job's suffering and praying and worshipping, we see that he has already blazed a trail of courage and integrity for us to follow." Eugene H. Peterson - Job - The Message
• "Should you choose to suffer? no, but choose to get in positions of love which in all likelihood will require suffering......don't look for pain - - but look for people in pain.....look at the cost and you embrace the cost" John Piper
• "Anyone who has gone through great suffering is bound to have a greater sympathy and understanding of the problems of mankind." Eleanor Roosevelt (submitted by Pat Church)
• "I do not ask the wounded person how he feels; I, myself, become the wounded person." Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
• "Suffering people are often our best teachers" Kenneth Czillinger, Catholic priest - archdiocese for Cincinnati
• "When someone we love suffers, we suffer with that person, and we would not have it otherwise, because the suffering and the love are one, just as it is with God's love for us." Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark
• "Look at each day as if it were your last. That way we would have to open up completely, drop all pretenses, and be right there with and for one another.", Maimonides- rabbi, physician, philosopher
• "Not allowing a person who has experienced a great loss to walk alone is the greatest act of love that heals." Pesach Krauss, Why Me?
• "It is really rather foolish to so often feel we have to say something brilliant and enlightening to someone who is suffering. Job makes it clear that simple companionship is what suffering people often crave - not a course in philosophy." Kathryn Lindskoog, author and lecturer, Leadership magazine - 1985 "What Do You Say to Job?"
• "I think only through suffering all our wonderful human qualities come out in us. Unless and until you suffer, how will you understand other suffering ?" Sree Chakravarti, A Healing Journey
• "We think we understand another person's struggle until God reveals the same shortcomings in our lives."Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
• "The people used to strengthen us are never those who sympathize with us; in fact, we are hindered by those who give us their sympathy, because sympathy only serves to weaken us. No one better understands a saint than the saint who is as close and as intimate with Jesus Christ as possible. If we accept the sympathy of another saint, our spontaneous feeling is, "God is dealing too harshly with me and making my life too difficult." That is why Jesus said self pity is of the devil (Mt 16:21-23). Jesus refused the sympathy of people because He knew that no one on earth understood His purpose. He accepted only the sympathy of His Father and the angels." Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
• "On the street I saw a small girl cold and shivering in a thin dress, with little hope of a decent meal. I became angry and said to God, Why did you permit this? Why don't you do something about it? For a while God said nothing. That night He replied quite suddenly, I certainly did do something about it, I made you." Unknown.
• "A scar is a wound that has healed. We need to bring our wounds to Jesus, let Him heal them, and use our scars for Jesus. Our scars may be our greatest ministry." Adrian Rogers, pastor, Bellevue Baptist church, Memphis, TN
• "Trials make room for consolation. There is nothing that makes man have a big heart like a great trial. I have found that those people who have no sympathy for their fellows, who never weep for the sorrows of others very seldom have any ____ of their own. Great hearts could be made only by great troubles." Charles Spurgeon

• "It is more than comforting to realize that it is those who have plummed the depth of failure to whom invariably God gives the call to sheperd others. This is not a call given to the gifted, the highly trained or the polished, as such, without a bitter experience of their own inadequacy and poverty. They are quite unfitted to bear the burden of spiritual ministry. It takes a man wo has discovered something of the measures of his own weakness to be patient with the sins of others. Such a man also has firsthand knowledge of the loving care of the chief shepard in his ability to heal one wo has come humbly to trust him." JC Medcalf
• "In whatever God does in the course of our lives, he gives us, through the experience, some power to help others." Elisabeth Elliot
• "If you learn from your suffering, and really come to understand the lesson you've been taught, you might be able to help someone else who's now in the phase you may have just completed. Maybe that's what it's all about after all...." Unknown
• "What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say." Ralph Walso Emerson
• "The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love." Hubert Humphrey
• "When friends ask, there is no tomorrow." Proverb
• "Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them." Morrie Schwartz , Tuesdays With Morrie
• "Love each other or perish." W.H. Auden
• "If you're trying to show off for people at the top - - forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you're trying to show off for people at the bottom - - forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone." Morrie Schwartz, Tuesdays With Morrie
• "Be compassionate, and take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much a better place." Morrie Schwartz, Tuesdays With Morrie
• "It must be a terrible thing for a man to have never to have suffered physical pain. You say, 'I should like to be that man.' Ah, unless you had extraordinary grace, you would grow hard and cold; you would get to be a sort of cast iron man, breaking other people with your touch. No, let my heart be tender, even be soft, if it must be softened by pain, for I would fain know how to bind up my fellow's wound. Let my eye have a tear ready for my brother's sorrows, even if in order to that, I should have to shed ten thousand for my own. As escape from suffering would be escape from the power to sympathize, and that were to be deprecated beyond all things." Charles Spurgeon
• "If there were no suffering, would there be compassion? If there were no discipline and hardship, would we ever learn patience and endurance? Construct a universe with no trouble in it and immediately you banish some of the finest qualities in the world." James Stewart
• "Sympathy is a shallow stream in the souls of those who have not suffered." William E. Sangster
• "It is Christlike work to soothe and sympathize, and only those who have drunk the cup of sorrow are fully equipped to do it." William E. Sangster
• Practical suggestions for providing comfort from Joni Eareckson Tada:
  • Listen, Listen, Listen - the person who is grieving must be allowed an open expression of feelings without condemnation at all stages of the grief process.
  • Understand your ow feelings - be honest about those feelings.
  • Affirm the value of the one who is grieving - share memories and stories.
  • Don't use cliches. They are meaningless, devalue the person, and show a real lack of understanding.
  • Encourage reality. Gently and patiently help the person to accept what has happened and to go on with life.
  • Weep with them. Tears unite us when words fail !
  • Don't stifle their grief. It is not unchristian to grieve. Every human being must go through the grief process after suffering a significant loss.
  • Touch, don't talk. One hug can say more than a million words.
  • Give practical help. Plan meals, clean the house, help make arrangements, care for the children, give some relief from daily requirements.
  • Don't avoid talking about the afficted or departed one.
  • Motivate them to mingle with others. Invite them over to dinner or for an outing.
  • Don't disappear after a couple of weeks. Be committed to care after the initial crisis is past.
• "When we suffer and handle it with grace, we're like walking billboards advertising the positive way God works in the life of someone who suffers." Joni Eareckson Tada
• "Nothing is stronger than gentleness." Abraham Lincoln
• "Helping others is perhaps the greatest joy! You cannot have a perfect day without helping others with no thought of getting something in return." John Wooden
• "It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely help another without helping himself." Ralph Waldo Emerson

The words to Bridge Over Troubled Water - Paul Simon

When you're weary Feeling small. When tears are in your eyes I will dry them all.
I'm on your side When times get rough And friends just can't be found, Like a bridge over troubled water I will lay me down Like a bridge over troubled water I will lay me down
When you're down and out When you're on the street When evening falls so hard I will comfort you
I'll take your part When darkness comes And pain is all around Like a bridge over troubled water I will lay me down Like a bridge over troubled water I will lay me down
Sail on Silver Girl, Sail on by Your time has come to shine All your dreams are on their way
See how they shine If you need a friend I'm sailing right behind Like a bridge over troubled water I will ease your mind Like a bridge over troubled water I will ease your mind

• "There is no learning sympathy except by suffering. It cannot be studied in a book, it must be written on the heart. You must go through the fire if you would have sympathy with others who tread the glowing coals. You must yourself bear the cross if you would feel for those whose life is a burden to them." Charles Spurgeon
• "You must go into the furnace if you would have the nearest and dearest dealings with Christ Jesus. Whenever the Lord appears, it is to his people when they are in a militant posture. Moses saw God at Horeb, but it was in a burning bush, Joshua saw Him, but it was with a drawn sword in his hand, to show that his people are still a militant people. And here (Daniel 3:25) where the saints saw the savior, it was as himself in the furnace. The richest thought that a Christian can perhaps live on is this, that Christ is in the furnace with him. When you suffer, Christ suffer." Charles Spurgeon
• "As all the rivers run into the sea, so all the streams of the church's sufferings run into Christ. If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth. And if Christians hearts be full of woes, it empties itself onto the breast of Jesus." Charles Spurgeon (Acts 9:4)
• "Do not believe that any man will become a physician unless he walks the hospitals. And I am sure that no one will become a minister or comforter unless he lies in the hospital as well as walks through it, and has to suffer himself." Charles Spurgeon

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