God Grief Quotes & Sayings

If grief kills us not, we kill it. Not that I cease to grieve; for each hour, revealing to me how excelling and matchless the being was, who once was mine, but renews the pang with which I deplore my alien state upon earth. But such is God's will; I am doomed to a divided existence, and I submit. Meanwhile I am human; and human affections are the native, luxuriant growth of a heart, whose weakness it is, too eagerly, and too fondly, to seek objects on whom to expend its yearning. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

In moments of unmet desire, heartbreak, or grief, Satan sends a poisonous arrow of doubt straight at your heart. This was his plan with Eve. He persuaded her to think God was "holding out on her" and that she would be better off not listening to Him. — Marian Jordan Ellis

O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies, O worse than chains, dungeon or beggary, or decrepit age! Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct, and all her various objects of delight annulled, which might in part my grief have eased. Inferior to the vilest now become of man or worm; the vilest here excel me, they creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed to daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong, within doors, or without, still as a fool, in power of others, never in my own; scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half. — John Milton

When Jesus tells us about his Father, we distrust him. When he shows us his Home, we turn away, but when he confides to us that he is 'acquainted with Grief', we listen, for that also is an Acquaintance of our own. — Emily Dickinson

If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild. — C.S. Lewis

Of course the cat will growl and spit at the operator and bite him if she can. But the real question is whether he is a vet or a vivisector. — C.S. Lewis

The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can't stand pain. Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief. Joy, by the grace of God, is the transfiguration of suffering into endurance, and of endurance into character, and of character into hope
and the hope that has become our joy does not (as happiness must for those who depend up on it) disappoint us. — Walter Wangerin Jr.

Aircraft do not crash of themselves. They come to grief because men are foolish, or vain, or lazy, or irresolute or reckless. One crash in a thousand may be unavoidable because God wills it so - not more than that. — Nevil Shute

The judge remembers to be a parent: a father in wistfulness, a mother in yearning, a God of grief flowing with tears beside the deathbed. The angry God remembers to be a God who cares about the beloved partner. God has noticed. God has noticed the mocking and the dying, the denial and the irrepressible pain.
To — Walter Brueggemann

The world that was the emonation of divine had been reduced to a handful of dust. Thousands of people, all caught in profile looked into their mobile fish tanks. Each face, each car, transporting grief, boredom, rage. Someone in one of these cars was contemplating murder. Someone, rite now, in the privecy of his aquarium, threaded the beads of his suicide through his fingers, praying along the chain like a rosary. Someone begged for help from a God he didnt quite believe in, yet had no one else to appeal to. — Janet Fitch

If you can just trust Him enough to bring it to Him, He will rejoice in your masterpiece. And if you need to scream a little, know that you have a God who can take that too, as long as your face is tilted (even slightly) toward Him — Angie Smith

One of the great Confederate combat leaders, General John B. Gordon, had sat at his horse and spoken farewell to his men. Some he had seen weeping as they folded burnt and shot-pierced battle flags and laid them on the stacked arms of surrender. As he told his troops his own grief he tried to give them hope to rebuild out of the poverty and ashes to which many would return. Gordon would never forget a Kentucky father who lost two sons, one dying for the North, the other for the South. Over the two graves of his soldier boys the father set up a joint monument inscribed God knows which was right. — Carl Sandburg

Yes, she had changed her mind after sixty years and she would like to see George. I want you to find George. Find him and be sure to tell him I forgot him. I want him to know I had my husband just the same and my children and my house like any other woman. A good house too and a good husband that I loved and fine children out of him. Better than I had hoped for even. Tell him I was given back everything he took away and more. Oh, no, oh, God, no, there was something else besides the house and the man and the children. Oh, surely they were not all? What was it? Something not given back... Her breath crowded down under her ribs and grew into a monstrous frightening shape with cutting edges; it bored up into her head, and the agony was unbelievable: Yes, John, get the Doctor now, no more talk, the time has come. — Katherine Anne Porter

God can make good use of all that happens, but the loss is real. — C.S. Lewis

With a sigh, he pulled out his link.
"What are you doing?"
"Ordering pizza
for your division
and more for the E and B team. And don't give me any bloody grief about it. I'm a bit on edge here as I couldn't get through the bloody, buggering door for more than five minutes
and that was after Feeney started on it before me. And my wife about to be blown to bits on the other side."
She knew the fear, the soul-emptying terror of it. She'd felt it for him a time or two. All she could do now was try to ease it.
"I wasn't going to let that happen."
"Weren't you now?"
"Nope. I wasn't going to let the last words I said to you be 'Later, honey.'"
Since it made him laugh, she sat back, closed her eyes for one blessed moment while she heard him ordering twenty-five (good God!) large pies with a variety of toppings. — J.D. Robb

When someone close to you dies, you feel like you might die too. It takes some of the life out of you for a time. — Lisa Bedrick

Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back
to be sucked back
into it? — C.S. Lewis

It is night at the front, a shadow, a shot. The Jew who has just fired
hears a moan ...
And then, mother, the hair stands up on his head, for only a few feet from him in the darkness the enemy voice is reciting in Hebrew the prayer of the dying. Ai, God, the soldier has cut down a Jewish brother! Ai, misery! He drops his rifle and runs into no man's land, insane with shame and grief. Insane, you understand? The enemy fires at him, his comrades shout at him to come back. But he refuses; he stays in no man's land and dies. Ai, misery, ai ... ! — Andre Schwarz-Bart

Harold's Bow and Food
Bowl bowl bowl bowl
Food food food food
The miracle of the heavenly restaurant
I mouth this
great dark sad evening
Suddenly they come for me in a limousine
How could I have believed I was vanquished
I never lay slain I
am the victor this parade is for me
Now they have led me to the doors of God
Long ago and forever
I was in this place
on the other side of eating
where I am full and the empty
bowl is beautiful
from Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs — Denis Johnson

The kindness sent from one compassionate soul to another during the time of loss of one held so dear allows the sorrow-filled heart to open wide, filling the space of emptiness that grief may have created with a renewed sense of peace, compassion, and love. — Molly Friedenfeld

There are such things as consecrated griefs, sorrows that may be common to everyone but which take on a special character when accepted intelligently and offered to God in loving submission. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

The portrait of his past was partially erased by God and he is searching for those erased portions. — Durgesh Satpathy

Some of the most challenging work a suicide survivor can do is to pray. To pray fully, survivors must bring all of themselves to the prayer: their anger, disappointment, fears, insecurities, and why's. I bring all of me into an encounter with God, aware that nothing in the human experience, or the human response to the ambushes of life, is alien to God. — Harold Ivan Smith

In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on. — George Eliot

The Lesson You've Got
to learn is the someday you'll someday
stagger to, blinking in cold light, all tears
shed, ready to poke your bovine head
in the yoke they've shaped.
Everyone learns this. Born, everyone
breathes, pays tax, plants dead
and hurts galore. There's grief enough
for each. My mother
learned by moving man to man,
outlived them all. The parched earth's
bare (once she leaves it) of any who watched
the instants I trod it.
Other than myself, of course.
I've made a study of bearing
and forbearance. Everyone does,
it turns out, and note
those faces passing by: Not one's a god. — Mary Karr

God is a creation of human brain — Durgesh Satpathy

Love was first begot by Mirth and Peace, in Eden, when the world was young. The man oppressed with cares, he can not love; the man of gloom finds not the god. So, as youth, for the most part, has no cares, and knows no gloom, therefore, ever since time did begin, youth belongs to love. Love may end in grief and age, and pain and need, and all other modes of human mournfulness; but love begins in joy. Love's first sigh is never breathed, till after love hath laughed. Love laughs first, and then sighs after. Love has not hands, but cymbals; Love's mouth is chambered like a bugle, and the instinctive breathings of his life breathe jubilee notes of joy! — Herman Melville

My comrades, hardly strangers to pain before now, we all have weathered worse. Some god will grant us an end to this as well. You've threaded the rocks resounding with Scylla's howling rabid dogs, and taken the brunt of the Cyclops' boulders, too. Call up your courage again. Dismiss your grief and fear. A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this. Through so many hard straits, so many twists and turns our course holds firm for Latium. There Fate holds out a homeland, calm, at peace. There the gods decree the kingdom of Troy will rise again. Bear up. Save your strength for better times to come. — Virgil

It was too perfect to last,' so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic - as if God no sooner saw two of His creatures happy than He stopped it ('None of that here!'). As if He were like the Hostess at the sherry-party who separates two guests the moment they show signs of having got into a real conversation. But it could also mean 'This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged.' As if God said, 'Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next. — C.S. Lewis

Grief can kill a person emotionally and physically. If not counteracted with God's strength and power, our personal weakness may debilitate us. — Billy Graham

The evil we see today was not part of God's original design. It was not God's intent for human life. That means that ultimately, even a peaceful death at the age of 90 yrs old is not the way things were meant to be...The rage at the dying of the light is our intuition that we were not meant for mortality, for the loss of love, or for the triumph of darkness. In order to help people face death and grief we often tell people that death is a perfectly natural part of life. But that asks them to repress a very right and profound human intuition - that we were not meant to simply go to dust, and that love was meant to last. — Timothy J. Keller

It has been more than twenty years since she lost her two daughters here, the one who was never given a name or a life, and her precious Usha. With thoughts of Usha comes the physical ache in her heart. There has not been a day since Usha's birth that Kavita has not thought of her, mourned her loss, and prayed for the hollow feelings of grief to melt away. But God has not listened. Or else he has not yet forgiven her. Because the heartache has endured. — Shilpi Somaya Gowda

So when we call pain a problem, we claim we do not deserve it. We are even prepared to scuttle God to maintain our own innocence. We will say that God is not able to do what He would like, or He would never permit persons such as ourselves to suffer. That puffs up our egos and soothes our griefs at the same time. "How could God do this to me?" is at once an admission of pain and a soporific for it. It reduces our personal grief by eradicating the deity. Drastic medicine, indeed, that only a human ego, run wild, could possibly imagine. — John Gerstner

My experience is that God will meet us anywhere. Grieving badly and under the covers? He's there. Sitting at the cemetery, wishing it were you? You're not alone. Sitting on your child's bedroom floor still in your nightgown in the middle of the afternoon? He's holding you up. God will meet you anywhere — Shelley Ramsey

Loving God, in life and in death, we belong to you. So in the midst of life, we entrust ourselves to your care. We are bold to ask for help when we are confused, lost, or afraid. We are eager to ask for healing for our bodies and minds, whether wounded, ill, or recovering. And we are unceasing in our prayers for those we love who are far from us physically, emotionally, or spiritually. In the midst of death and grief, even though we are weary, we return again and again, praying for comfort, for an easing of the pain that comes from loss, and for the light of your presence to pierce the present darkness. — Kimberly Bracken Long

Where one might break, two can stand tall. Where one might fold, two can hold firm. From here until the end of your days on earth, you will have someone to support you during times of weakness, comfort you during times of grief, encourage you during times of fear, and celebrate with you during times of joy. That is a gift, one that should never be abused or taken for granted. Cherish each other as God cherishes you, and you will both know peace. — S.C. Stephens

Remember: God's grief at the unspeakable things we do to one another is beyond measuring, but so is His mercy. It might seem a terrible thing to say to people who've lost and suffered so much at the hands of hatred and violence. But true courage is not to hate our enemy, any more than to fight and kill him. To love him, to love in the teeth of his hate - that is real bravery. That ought to earn people m-m-medals. — Tony Hendra

The Risen Christ proclaimed not that we 'have to forgive,' but rather, that at last we CAN forgive-and thereby free ourselves from consuming bitterness and the offender from our binding condemnation. This process requires genuine human anger and grief, plus-and here is the awful cost of such freedom-a humble willingness to see the offender as God sees that person, in all his or her terrible brokenness and need for God's saving power. I would never tell another, 'You have to forgive.' — Gordon Dalbey

I turned to face Audrey, and everything I loved was right there in her eyes, the memories tangible: the schooldays and sleepovers, the cheap bottles of wine and sappy chick flicks. She was there for my mother's drunken relapses, there to hold me until I fell asleep the first time the ex from Seattle hit me. It was all there, and my God, each memory was suddenly sacred and the sun rose and set upon it. — Rachael Wade

I tell you hopeless grief is passionless,
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet;
If it could weep, it could arise and go. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

But with her eyes closed, she began to whisper. "If you have someone to love, then love. If you have someone to forgive, then forgive. You think, when you're seventeen, there's time enough for that, but there's not. There's no time at all."
I squeezed her hand, trying to think of how to respond. But she took the burden from me and kept whispering. "You want to know why God gave us people to love? Because that's the only way we can understand how he feels about us. Desperate and jealous. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Hagar sat in full anticipation of her son's death, and instead of looking to what God had given her, she surrendered to the fear. Is it possible that the well is right beside you but you haven't seen it because your head is hung in grief? Are you so focused on what you think is missing that you don't see what is present? Maybe you need to ask the Lord to illuminate what it is He wants you to see. It's possible that what you have seen as the end of the road is actually an opportunity to open your eyes and see something you haven't. — Angie Smith

In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs-and God has given my share-
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down. — Oliver Goldsmith

It is the moment when a great old door, locked and barred since our first disobedience, swings open suddenly to reveal not just the garden, opened once more to our delight, but the coming city, the garden city that God had always planned and is now inviting us to go through the door and build with him. The dark power that stood in the way of this kingdom vision has been defeated, overthrown, rendered null and void. Its legions will still make a lot of noise and cause a lot of grief, but the ultimate victory is now assured. This is the vision the evangelists offer us as they bring together the kingdom and the cross. — N. T. Wright

If God had not grievance to all, we will not have survived up to the time we repented — Sunday Adelaja

Sometimes events that lead us bereft of anything but grief just happen for no reason other than happenstance
a car turns left instead of right, a train is missed, a call comes too late
and the real test of our humanness is whether, in light of that knowledge, we are ever able to recover. When we again find our way despite the inability to manufacture a deeper meaning in our suffering, that I think is when God smiles upon us, proud of the strength of his creation. — Neil Abramson

Her mother had come a week after the baby died, the only time Annie had seen her since she'd left Kansas. Her hair gone white, her dress starched stiff, her small hands as dry as paper. Annie had wanted her mother to make it better. What she got was "God decides what's right for us" and a butter cake she'd packed from home, made by someone in the congregation. Maybe something truthful, some real emotion from her mother, might have been a small bridge Annie could have crossed. But hers had been a family of hidden feelings, held tongues. "Life is so hard out here," her mother had said, unable to wipe the sigh from her voice, the disapproval, as if the Panhandle - Annie's choice - was somehow to blame for the baby's death. Annie had been too grief-tired to get angry, but she had had the thought, when she looked at her mother's stolid face, that she would probably never see her — Rae Meadows

I used to think that happiness, like God, was an idea weaker people were sold on, to manage the grief of a world with so much suffering. It is just easier, I thought, to decide that you are doing something wrong and you just need to buy the right thing, read the right book, find the right guru, or pray more to be happy than to accept that life is a great long heartbreak. Happiness is not what I imagined that mirage to be: an unending ecstasy or state of perpetual excitement. Not a high or a mirage, it is just being okay. My happiness is the absence of fear that there won't be enough
enough money, enough power, enough security, enough of a cushion of these things to protect me from the everyday heartbreaks of being human. Heartbreak doesn't kill you. It changes you. — Melissa Febos

On February 14, I received a telegram from Buenos Aires urging me to return home immediately; my father was "not at all well." God forgive me, but the prestige of being the recipient of an urgent telegram, the desire to communicate to all of Fray Bentos the contradiction between the negative form of the news and the absoluteness of the adverbial phrase, the temptation to dramatize my grief by feigning a virile stoicism-all this perhaps distracted me from any possibility of real pain. — Jorge Luis Borges

God's not complicated - He's really not. And He helps people in their everyday life so that they can get better in relationships, in their job situations, in getting through grief. — Victoria Osteen

In the midst of grief, there is no such thing as strong women of God. There is only brokenness, desperate need, and little girls in Daddy's lap. We are not called to be strong women. Oh, how that sentence makes me bristle. I want to be strong, independent, and capable. This broken, desperate need for Christ offends my mask. — Emily P. Freeman

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope. — Alexandre Dumas

No benefit comes from a just man's prayer if he who asks for it finds more pleasure in sin than in virtue. For Samuel mourned over Saul when he sinned, but he was not able to obtain God's mercy, for his grief was not supported by the necessary change of life on the part of the sinner. Hence God put an end to the pointless grief of His servant, saying to him, 'How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?' (I Sam. 16:1). — Maximus The Confessor

The mind never puts forth greater power over itself when in great trials, it yields up calmly its desires, affections, and interests in God. There are seasons when to be still demands immeasurably higher strength than to act. Composure is often the highest result of power. Do you think it demands no power to calm the stormy elements of passion, to moderate the vehemence of desire, to throw off the load of dejection, to suppress every repining thought when the dearest hopes are withered, and to turn the wounded spirit from dangerous reveries and wasting grief, to the quiet discharge of ordinary duties? Is there no power put forth, when a {woman}, stripped of {her} property, of the fruits of a life's labors, quells discontent and gloomy forebodings, and serenely and patiently returns to the tasks which Providence assigns? — William Ellery Channing

Thou silent power, whose welcome sway charms every anxious thought away; in whose divine oblivion drown'd, sore pain and weary toil grow mild, love is with kinder looks beguiled, and Grief forgets her fondly cherish'd wound; oh, whither hast thou flown, indulgent god? God of kind shadows and of healing dews, whom dost thou touch with thy Lethaean rod? Around whose temples now thy opiate airs diffuse? — Mark Akenside

Sometimes I think God is like weather - you may not like
the weather, but it has nothing to do with you. You just happen to be there. Deal with it. Sadness
and grief are part of being human and always will be. — Douglas Coupland

Can human nature be so entirely transformed inside and out? Can man, created by God, be made wicked by man? Can a soul be so completely changed by its destiny, and turn evil when its fate is evil? Can the heart become distorted, contract incurable deformities and incurable infirmities, under the pressure of disproportionate grief, like the spinal column under a low ceiling? Is there not in every human soul a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world and immortal in the next, which can be developed by goodness, kindled, lit up, and made to radiate, and which evil can never entirely extinguish. — Victor Hugo

God will have the body partake with the soul-as in matters of grief, so in matters of joy; the lanthorn shines in the light of the candle within. — Richard Sibbes

Theologians sometimes have spoken of the "impassibility of God;" namely that God could not be capable of emotions, of either joy and pleasure or pain and grief.237 But this goes beyond the language and teaching of the Scripture. — Timothy J. Keller

The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom — Kahlil Gibran

God gifted a Zoo; with a paralyzed care taker. — Durgesh Satpathy

After an eternity of grief and regret, he held the only thing he'd ever wanted as much as he wanted to be God. A second chance. — Karen Marie Moning

Who was this Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief? Who is the King of glory, this Lord of hosts? He is our Master. He is our Savior. He is the Son of God. He is the Author of our Salvation. He beckons, "Follow me." He instructs, "Go, and do thou likewise." He pleads, "Keep my commandments." Let us follow Him. Let us emulate His example. Let us obey His word. By so doing, we give to Him the divine gift of gratitude. — Thomas S. Monson

And they need not cause you grief. As my Highland grandmother said - and she had the Sight - "Tis not the dead ye have to be concerned about! Beware of the Living!" And she was a wise woman. The dead are beyond your help or mine, poor things. But the living need us. Thirty souls at the least, Phryne, are still on that island to praise God who might now be angels - or devils. — Kerry Greenwood

And the centurion who stood by said:
Truly this was a son of God.
Not long ago but everywhere I go
There is a hill and a black windy sky.
Portent of hill, sky, day's eclipse I know;
Hill, sky, the shuddering darkness, these am I.
The dying at His right hand, at His left,
I am - the thief redeemed and the lost thief;
I am the careless folk; I those bereft,
The Well-Belov'd, the women bowed in grief.
The gathering Presence that in terror cried,
In earth's shock in the Temple's veil rent through,
I; and a watcher, ignorant, curious-eyed,
I the centurion who heard and knew — Adelaide Crapsey

While Christianity was able to agree with pagan writers that inordinate attachment to earthly goods can lead to unnecessary pain and grief, it also taught that the answer to this was not to love things less but to love God more than anything else. Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope. — Timothy Keller

When children's children shall talk of War as a madness that may not be; When we thank our God for our grief today, and blazon from sea to sea In the name of the Dead the banner of Peace ... that will be Victory. — Robert W. Service

Grief, I swear to God, doesn't live in the heart. It lives in the senses. And sometimes, all I want to do is cut off my nose so I can't smell her, hack my fingers off at the joint. — Dennis Lehane

Rest in peace? Please, God, no. Haunt me, Sofia. You said you'd haunt me. — Helen Maryles Shankman

God doesn't give us pain to make us strong. He gives us strength to look inside ourselves and realize we are not innocent victims. When you learn humility, you are no longer a victim because a humble man is not self-absorbed. He seeks to understand why people are hurting him and takes responsibility for his part in their grief. Humility doesn't dwell with anger or pride, and neither does God. — Shannon L. Alder

Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game 'or else people won't take it seriously'. Apparently it's like that. Your bid - for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity - will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world. — C.S. Lewis

Often it takes that "knife in our heart" to drive us to Him. Our faith, our very lives, depend on God, and when we enter the valley of grief, we need His help or we will never climb another mountain. — Billy Graham

He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it's not about his face, but the life force I can see in him. It's the smile and the pure promise of everything he has to offer. Like he's saying, 'Here I am world, are you ready for so much passion and beauty and goodness and love and every other word that should be in the dictionary under the word life?' Except this boy is dead, and the unnaturalness of it makes me want to pull my hair out with Tate and Narnie and Fitz and Jude's grief all combined. It makes me want to yell at the God that I wish I didn't believe in. For hogging him all to himself. I want to say, 'You greedy God. Give him back. I needed him here. — Melina Marchetta

KING HENRY VI:
Would I were dead, if God's good will were so;
For what is in this world but grief and woe? — William Shakespeare

A man by his sin may waste himself, which is to waste that which on earth is most like God. This is man's greatest tragedy and God's heaviest grief. — A.W. Tozer

was it scripted by God or I am playing with my life. — Durgesh Satpathy

Sometimes it is hard not to say, 'God forgive God.' Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn't. He crucified Him. — C.S. Lewis

When a small group of people come together to relive the Salem witch hunts, God cries. For if anything is sorrowful to God, it is evil done in his name. When you find out you were not given the truth, how will you live with yourself? — Shannon L. Alder

Pain has been and grief enough and bitterness and crying,
Sharp ways and stony ways I think it was she trod;
But all there is to see now is a white bird flying,
Whose blood-stained wings go circling high - circling up to God! — Margaret Widdemer

We are bidden to 'put on Christ', to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little. — C.S. Lewis

I think faith is incredibly important because you will become overwhelmed with what's happening and you will have waves of grief, but when you turn to your faith, I believe God will give you waves of grace to get through it. — Joel Osteen

Surely Scripture is right when it makes the sin of sins that unbelief, which is at bottom nothing else than a refusal to take the cup of salvation. Surely no sharper grief can be inflicted upon the Spirit of God than when we leave His gifts neglected and unappropriated. — Alexander MacLaren

Regardless of your religious beliefs, you should never tell a mourning mother that it was "God's plan." For some people, that can be worse than saying nothing at all. For a non-believer, the words that are meant to console a religious person can do quite the opposite. — David G. McAfee

I am convinced that when we bring our griefs and sorrows within the story of God's own grief and sorrow, and allow them to be held there, God is able to bring healing to us ans new possibilities to our lives. That is, of course, what Good Friday and Easter are all about — N. T. Wright

For several decades, I said I believed in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit and had put my confidence in Him. The hot crucible of grief was my place to back up what I said I believed and admit to myself who my God really was: The God I claimed to know, or a false god who can be manipulated into resolving the external circumstances of my life. — Shelley Ramsey

Sometimes God seems to be killing us when He is actually saving us. — Jen Pollock Michel

She knew how to hit to a hair's breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty ... At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story. Rather they became a part of it; for the world is only a psychological phenomenon, and what they seemed, they were. The midnight airs and gusts, moaning amongst the tightly wrapped buds and bark of the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach. A wet day was the expression of irremediable grief at her weakness in the mind of some vague ethical being whom she could not class definitely as the God of her childhood, and could not comprehend as any other. — Thomas Hardy

The clouds were gathering over Mary, too--deep and dark, but of altogether another kind from those that enveloped Letty: no troubles are for one moment to be compared with those that come of the wrongness, even if it be not wickedness, that is our own. Some clouds rise from stagnant bogs and fens; others from the wide, clean, large ocean. But either kind, thank God, will serve the angels to come down by. In the old stories of celestial visitants the clouds do much; and it is oftenest of all down the misty slope of griefs and pains and fears, that the most powerful joy slides into the hearts of men and women and children. — George MacDonald

See what a hidden life the life of a good Christian is, and how much it is concealed from the eye and observation of the world. The most important part of the business lies between God and our own souls, in the frame of our spirits and the working of our hearts, in our actions that no eye sees except the all-seeing God. Justly are the saints called God's hidden ones, and His secret is said to be with them. They have meat to eat and work to do that the world does not know of, as well as joys, griefs, and cares that a stranger does not share. — Matthew Henry

How did you know He was God?' Gamache asked.
'When does a bush that burns become a Burning Bush?' Em asked and Gamache nodded. 'My despair disappeared. The grief remained, of course, but I knew then that the world wasn't a dark and desperate place. I was so relieved. In that moment I found hope. This strnager with the sign had given it to me. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but suddenly the gloom was lifted.'
She paused a moment, remembering, a smile on her face. — Louise Penny

We can find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time simply because we didn't do what God was telling us to do, or we neglected to ask Him what we were supposed to be doing before we made decisions. Or perhaps we asked Him, but we failed to wait for an answer before we went ahead and did what we wanted to do. So much grief can be avoided by living God's way. — Stormie O'martian

No matter who causes you grief, take your complaints to the meditation room, where your real friend is. In addition to your husband or wife, you should have a friend - and that friend should be God. Even if your husband or wife makes you unhappy, tell that to God, and not to anyone else. If your neighbor picks a fight with you, go to the meditation room and complain, 'Why did you let him treat me like that? Weren't you with me?' Open your heart and tell God everything. Then it becomes a satsang. — Mata Amritanandamayi

True repentance has as its constituent elements not only grief and hatred of sin, but also an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ. It hates the sin, and not simply the penalty; and it hates the sin most of all because it has discovered God's love. — William Mackergo Taylor

What his uncle does not understand is that in walking backwards, his back to the world, his back to God, he is not grieving. He is objecting. Because when everything cherished by you in life has been taken away, what else is there to do but object? — Yann Martel

A vision of God high and lifted up reveals to me my sin and increases my love for him. Grief and love lead to genuine repentance, and I begin to be conformed to the image of the One I behold. — Jen Wilkin

The sun is high and I'm surrounded by sand.
For as far as my eyes can see
I'm strapped into a rocking chair
With a blanket over my knees
I am a stranger to myself
And nobody knows I'm here
When I looked into my face
It wasn't myself I'd seen
But who I've tried to be.
I'm thinking of things I'd hoped to forget.
I'm choking to death in a sun that never sets.
I clugged up my mind with perpetual grief
And turned all my friends into enemies
And now that past has returned to haunt me.

I'M SCARED OF GOD AND SCARED OF HELL
AND I'M CAVING IN UPON MYSELF
HOW CAN ANYONE KNOW ME
WHEN I DON'T EVEN KNOW MYSELF — Jose Angel Manas

No man's condition is so base as his;
None more accurs'd than he; for man esteems
Him hateful, 'cause he seems not what he is;
God hates him, 'cause he is not what he seems;
What grief is absent, or what mischief can
Be added to the hate of God and man? — Francis Quarles

He whose heart is divinely touched with the magnet of God's Spirit, will endeavor to attract those who are near him to Christ. The heathen could say, "We are not born for ourselves only." The more excellent anything is, the more diffusive it is. In the body every member is diffusive: the eye conveys light; the head, spirits; the heart, blood. A Christian must not move altogether within his own circle - but seek the welfare of others. To be diffusively good makes us resemble God, whose sacred influence is universal. And surely it will be no grief of heart, when conscience can witness for us that we have brought glory to God in this matter by working to fill heaven. Not that this is in any way meritorious, or has any causal influence on our salvation. Christ's blood is the sole cause - but our promoting God's glory in the conversion of others is a signal evidence of our salvation. — Thomas Watson

Happy, even in anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love and grief! He who has not seen the things of this world, and the heart of men in this double light, has seen nothing, and knows noting of the truth. — Victor Hugo

Grief is a stern teacher, but I am confident I could not have learned some lessons in any other way. For that, I am grateful. Grateful to God for loving me enough to stretch me and push me and crush me, to refine me in the furnace of affliction, to force me to stretch my faith beyond what I could see.
God loves me more than I can possible comprehend. He watches over me. He watches over all of us. But if the way were easy, how could we grow into who He wants us to be? How could our faith become unshakable? — Jennifer Beckstrand