In the Garden story, good and evil are found on the same tree, not in separate orchards. Good and evil give meaning and definition to each other. If God, like us, is susceptible to immense pain, He is, like us, the greater in His capacity for happiness. The presence of such pain serves the larger purpose of God's master plan, which is to maximize the capacity for joy, or in other words, "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." He can no more foster those ends in the absence of suffering and evil than one could find the traction to run or the breath to sing in the vacuum of space. God does not instigate pain or suffering, but He can weave it into His purposes. "God's power rests not on totalizing omnipotence, but on His ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss into wisdom, understanding, and joy. Terryl L. Givens
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
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Anonymous
Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves.
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Joni Eareckson Tada
No woman wants to be in submission to a man who isn't in submission to God!
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T.d. Jakes
His hands are holding my cheeks, and he pulls back just to look me in the eye and his chest is heaving and he says, "I think, " he says, "my heart is going to explode, " and I wish, more than ever, that I...
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Tahereh Mafi
Why is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt most those we love best?
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Jacqueline Carey
More Quotes By Terryl L. Givens
...our minds are driven to answer questions that far transcend the bounds of our own lives.
God resides most strongly and evidently where science has not yet progressed to go... And if this is true then it follows that God resides everywhere and in everything.
As an inmate of a concentration camp, Corrie Ten Boom heard a commotion, and saw a short distance away a prison guard mercilessly beating a female prisoner. “What can we do for these people?” Corrie whispered. “Show them that love is greater, ” Betsie replied....
In the Garden story, good and evil are found on the same tree, not in separate orchards. Good and evil give meaning and definition to each other. If God, like us, is susceptible to immense pain, He is, like us, the greater in His capacity...
There are many kinds of silences and not all signify absence or vacancy.... Those moments are but temporary ebbs before the flow of meaning rushes in to fill the space.... God may be speaking 'in ways we have yet to recognize as speech.
