Barbara Francis, a staff member with Cru, shared this quote by Henri Nouwen in a devotional she sent out this week. I saved it and thought I would share it tonight...as we all mourn the heart wrenching reality of what happened in Connecticut today.
Pain suffered alone feels very different from pain suffered alongside another.
Even when pain stays, we know how great the difference is if another draws close,
if another shares with us in it.
This kind of comfort comes most fully and powerfully visible in the Incarnation,
wherein God comes into our midst—into our lives—to remind us,
“I am with you at all times and in all places.”
In Christ, God draws near us amid our sufferings—
the pain of infants or adolescents,
the hurts of young people or the aged,
the grief of the unemployed
or the suddenly single person.
There is not human suffering that has not in some way been a part of God’s experience.
That is the great and wonderful mystery of God becoming flesh to live among us.
God becomes a part of our mourning.
-Henri Nouwen
