When you and I hurt deeply, what we really need is not an explanation from God but a revelation of God. We need to see how great God is; we need to recover our lost perspective on life. Things get out of proportion when we are suffering, and it takes a vision of something bigger than ourselves to get life's dimensions adjusted again
Interpretation
In suffering, we seek a deeper understanding and perspective of a greater reality rather than mere explanations.
This quote emphasizes the need for a profound revelation of God during times of pain and suffering, rather than a simple explanation for our hardships. It suggests that when we are in distress, our perception of reality becomes distorted and that recognizing the greatness of God can help restore our sense of proportion and perspective on life.
In practice
A pastor might use this quote during a sermon on the nature of suffering and faith.
Nothing paralyzes our lives like the attitude that things can never change. We need to remind ourselves that God can change things. Outlook determines outcome. If we see only the problems, we will be defeated; but if we see the possibilities in the problems, we can have victory.
The ability to calm your soul and wait before God is one of the most difficult things in the Christian life. Our old nature is restless... the world around us is frantically in a hurry. But a restless heart usually leads to a reckless life.
If you are going to live by faith, then expect your faith to be tested. A faith that can't be tested can't be trusted.
People who walk by faith don't see obstacles, they see opportunities.
Hypocrisy means deliberately pretending. None of us lives up to his ideals; none of us is all that he would like to be or all that he could be in Christ. But that is not hypocrisy. Falling short of our ideals is not hypocrisy. Pretending we have reached our ideals when we have not - that is hypocrisy.
We have little control over the circumstances of life. We can't control the weather or the economy, and we can't control what other people say about or do to us. There is only one area where we have control--we can rule the kingdom inside. The heart of every problem is the problem in the heart.
My diary seems to keep me whole.
At birth, we emerge from dream soup. At death, we sink back into dream soup. In between soups, there is a crossing of dry land. Life is a portage.
...Surely, we must renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
To an eagle or to an owl or to a rabbit, man must seem a masterful and yet a forlorn animal; he has but two friends. In his almost universal unpopularity he points out, with pride, that these two are the dog and the horse. He believes, with an innocence peculiar to himself, that they are equally proud of this alleged confraternity. He says, 'Look at my two noble friends -- they are dumb, but they are loyal.' I have for years suspected that they are only tolerant.
Did you ever notice how difficult it is to argue with someone who is not obsessed with being right?
Either an ordered Universe or a medley heaped together mechanically but still an order; or can order subsist in you and disorder in the Whole! And that, too, when all things are so distinguished and yet intermingled and sympathetic.
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