Quotes & Sayings About Tragedy And God

I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that's the soul seeking some relief. — Kurt Vonnegut

Plain experience and common sense inform us that no abstract Person can have made us as we are without also wishing to delete us and start over (Gen. 8:21; Zeph. 1:2). Therefore, the existence of cruel and arbitrary nature, together with the universality of human sin, prevents us from beginning the theological enterprise with any concept of God that is distinct from revelation. All theologies of a cosmic harmonic principle shipwreck on the truths of tragedy, catastrophe, and injustice. — Paul F. M. Zahl

You who love wild passions, flee the holy austerity of my pleasures. All here breathes of God, peace and truth. — Jean Racine

Phury knelt beside him and stroked his face. "I've only ever had you to live for. If you die I have nothing.
I'm utterly lost. And you are needed here."
Zsadist tried to reach out, but couldn't lift his arms as Phury stood up.
"God, Z, I keep thinking this tragedy of ours is going to be over. But it just keeps going, doesn't it?"
Zsadist blacked out to the sound of his twin's boots heading from the room. — J.R. Ward

Our meeting was inevitable. Our love was terminal. But God and Goddess damn it, our daughter was no mistake at all. — Edward Morris

Let the preacher tell the truth. Let him make audible the silence of the news of the world with the sound turned off so that in the silence we can hear the tragic truth of the Gospel, which is that the world where God is absent is a dark and echoing emptiness; and the comic truth of the Gospel, which is that it is into the depths of his absence that God makes himself present in such unlikely ways and to such unlikely people that old Sarah and Abraham and maybe when the time comes even Pilate and Job and Lear and Henry Ward Beecher and you and I laugh till the tears run down our cheeks. And finally let him preach this overwhelming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have. — Frederick Buechner

...trust in God could impose an additional burden on good people slammed to their knees by some senseless tragedy. An atheist might be no less staggered by such an event, but nonbelievers often experienced a kind of calm acceptance: shit happens, and this particular shit happened to them. It could be more difficult for a person of faith to get to his feet precisely because he had to reconcile God's love and care with the stupid, brutal fact that something irreversibly terrible had happened. — Mary Doria Russell

Where [God] is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution are not the absolutely final things. — William James

Suffering is a part of every life. Rain falls upon every life. All people encounter tragedy. Everybody struggles through hardship - not just Christians. But for the believer, for the child of God, whatever comes into our life first comes through the grid of God's plan and purpose for our lives. There are no accidents in the life of the believer. — Greg Laurie

And yet it may happen in these most desperate trials of our human existence that beyond any rational explanation, we may feel a nail-scarred Hand clutching ours. We are able, as Etty Hillesun, the Dutch Jewess who died in Auschwitz on November 30, 1943, wrote, "to safeguard that little piece of God in ourselves" and not give way to despair. We make it through the night and darkness gives way to the light of morning. The tragedy radically alters the direction of our lives, but in our vulnerability and defenselessness we experience the power of Jesus in His present risenness. - Abba's Child — Brennan Manning

Scripture says: "Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted." I call on every American family and the family of America to observe a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, honoring the memory of the thousands of victims of these brutal attacks and comforting those who lost loved ones. We will persevere through this national tragedy and personal loss. In time, we will find healing and recovery; and, in the face of all this evil, we remain strong and united, "one Nation under God." — George W. Bush

Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people? ... The response would be ... to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all ... no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened. — Harold S. Kushner

The tragedy in our colleges and seminaries right now is that we turn men out who know the word of God. That is never going to turn the world.
The question is not whether they know the Word of God ...
The question is ... Do they know the God of the Word? — Leonard Ravenhill

When disappointment or tragedy or suffering strikes, we have a decision to make: Will we turn away from God, or will we turn toward Him? Which road will we take? One road leads to doubt, anger, bitterness, fear, hopelessness, and despair.
The other leads to hope, comfort, peace, strength, and joy. — Billy Graham

Even in tragedy, God through His Word offers hope for those who seek and believe. It starts with the promise of a better tomorrow, of life everlasting, of eternal peace. It's called faith, and it offers hope where none existed. — Zig Ziglar

You were made by hand with great love by the God of the universe, and he planted deep inside of you a set of loves and dreams and idiosyncrasies, and you can ignore them as long as you want, but they will at some point start yelling. Worse than that, if you ignore them long enough, they will go silent, and that's the real tragedy. — Shauna Niequist

The artist, surgeon, through clay form, can only look for cure with great obstinacy until he discovers, repeatedly, that love is god's only gift that enables man to transcend his tragedy and regain his wholeness and well-being beyond the claws of evil, rampaging as evil may be. — Jabra Ibrahim Jabra

God's signs are not always the ones we look for. We learn in tragedy that his purposes are not always our own. Yet the prayers of private suffering, whether in our homes or in this great cathedral, are known and heard, and understood. — George W. Bush

Beware of the pleasant view of the fatherhood of God: God is so kind and loving that of course He will forgive us. That thought, based solely on emotion, cannot be found anywhere in the New Testament. The only basis on which God can forgive us is the tremendous tragedy of the Cross of Christ. — Oswald Chambers

Why do people hate God? ... One, they hate the moral standard. Two, they hate the way he's transforming the world even in the midst of suffering and tragedy. — Kirk Cameron

sight. In his essay On The Sublime, Edmund Burke observes, "Represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy we have...and when you have collected your audience, just at the moment when their minds are filled with expectation, let it be reported that a criminal is on the point of being executed in the adjoining square..." And in a moment, the theater will be empty. In these bloody rituals of execution and repression, the leader becomes the ancient God-King stepping forward to save his people, a promise as dangerous as it is seductive. If there is one lesson we can take away from the extravagant lives of our tyrants it is the fragility of our democratic society which, after all, is the exception, not the norm, in that dark, violent story known as human history. — Daniel Myerson

He looked up. His pale hair looked white. He looked fourteen going on some age that never was. He looked as if he'd been sitting there and God had made the trees and rocks around him. He looked like his own reincarnation and then his own again. Above all else he looked to be filled with a terrible sadness. As if he harbored news of some horrendous loss that no one else had heard of yet. Some vast tragedy not of fact or incident or event but of the way the world was. — Cormac McCarthy

What is the world? What is it for?
It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Faberge egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fufillment, a desert, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a song, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched.
Assess it like that. And when you're done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe. — N.D. Wilson

So, the great test of life is to see whether we will hearken to and obey God's commands in the midst of the storms of life. It is not to endure storms, but to choose the right while they rage. And the tragedy of life is to fail in that test and so fail to qualify to return in glory to our heavenly home. — Henry B. Eyring

The true aristocracy and the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key, - the minor key, - to existence. They differ in this way from the bourgeoisie of all classes, who deny tragedy, who will not tolerate it, and to whom the word of tragedy means in itself unpleasantness. — Isak Dinesen

The Exile In July 587 BCE, Babylonian soldiers broke through Jerusalem's walls, ending a starvation siege that had lasted well over a year. They burned the city and Solomon's temple and took its king and many other leaders to Babylon as captives, leaving others to fend for themselves in the destroyed land. Many surrounding countries disappeared altogether when similar disasters befell them. But Judah did not. Instead, the period scholars most often call the "Babylonian exile" inspired religious leaders to revise parts of Scripture that had been passed down to them. It also sparked the writing of entirely new Scriptures and the revision of ideas about God, creation, and history. Much of what is called the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament was written, edited, and compiled during and after this national tragedy. — Walter Brueggemann

Human existence is possible as existence not in despair, as existence not in tragedy - it is possible as existence in faith. The opposite of Sin - to use the traditional term for existence purely in society - is not virtue; it is faith. Faith is the belief that in God the impossible is possible, that in Him time and eternity are one, that both life and death are meaningful. In my favorite among Kierkegaard's books, a little volume called Fear and Trembling[published in 1843], — Peter F. Drucker

If we can accept the laws of the universe, the ebb and flow of joy and tragedy, then we have everything we need to embrace our true freedom. — Sarah Winman

God is a good horseman. He waits while we circle the fences of our lives - whatever they are, whether it be a bad childhood, or a destructive habit, family problems, an addiction, a personal tragedy, an inability to forgive someone else or to allow ourselves to ask forgiveness, or believe we deserve it. The Good Horseman waits, and each time we turn and look at Him, He stretches out His hand, slow and quiet, until finally, sooner or later, we reach for it, and we come to the center with Him, and find that peace was waiting there all along. — Lisa Wingate

OEDIPUS:
Upon the murderer I invoke this curse-
whether he is one man and all unknown,
or one of many- may he wear out his life
in misery to miserable doom!
If with my knowledge he lives at my hearth
I pray that I myself may feel my curse.
On you I lay my charge to fulfill all this
for me, for the God, and for this land of ours destroyed and blighted, by the God forsaken. — Sophocles

To our three levels of complicating alienation we must add the fundamental distinction or break between God and humankind, between Creator and creature. That "division" is no tragedy, but part and parcel of our identity and God's grandeur. It must be accounted for in the mystery of God, who reveals himself to us as we can bear it: revelation invariably involves concealment, since God is God and we are not. The communion that he forges with us remains a tantalizing "mystery" that leads us to know more and more of him, but never in completion - and at this, we wonder! As Kallistos Ware puts it, where knowledge of God is concerned, "The eyes are closed - but they are also opened" (The Orthodox Way, p. 15). — Edith M. Humphrey

Those who are believers in God find strength from their faith in the face of suffering. They are compelled to give sacrificially to help those in need. And they have the hope that comes from knowing that, with God by their side, the tragedy they are facing is never the final word. — Adam Hamilton

This is the tragedy and woe of the hour
that we neglect the most important One who could possibly be in our midst
the Holy Spirit of God. Then, in order to make up for His absence, we have to do something to keep up our own spirits. — A.W. Tozer

It is God who enables us to return to life after tragedy-not by eradicating all suffering but by giving us the strength and the courage to heal what we can heal. — Naomi Levy

The tragedy of life and of the world is not that men do not know God; the tragedy is that, knowing Him, they still insist on going their own way. — William Barclay

The tomb of the Saviour was a narrow and empty vault, precious only for its memories of the supreme tragedy of the centuries, but the new continent was to be the home and temple of the living God. — Chauncey Depew

I have been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He is a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. — Billy Graham

Commander I believe in God and his son Jesus Christ and because I do I can say this. Private Santiago is dead and that is a tragedy. But he is dead because he had no code. He is dead because he had no honor. And God was watching. — Kiefer Sutherland

The best lesson which we get from the tragedy of Karbala is that Husain and his companions were rigid believers in God. They illustrated that the numerical superiority does not count when it comes to the truth and the falsehood. The victory of Husain, despite his minority, marvels me! — Thomas Carlyle

We need strong Christians who can persevere against hardship, who can sustain hope through tragedy, who can lift others by their example and their compassion, and who can consistently overcome temptations. We need strong Christians who can make important things happen by their faith and who can defend the truth of Jesus Christ against moral relativism and militant atheism. What is the source of such moral and spiritual power, and how do we obtain it? The source is God. Our access to that power is through our covenants with Him. — D. Todd Christofferson

I have to ask myself how I can possibly expect to know Jesus as he would want to be known if my life remains unscathed by trouble and grief. How can I hope to grasp anything of God's heart for this broken planet if I never weep because its brokenness touches me and breaks my heart? How can I reflect his image if I never share in his sufferings? And how will any of us ever learn to treasure his hesed and grace if we never experience phases where these blessings seem absent? — Carolyn Custis James

It's interesting, Ted," I said, "that whenever something significantly painful happens to you, you rail against God, you rail against what a shitty, terrible world it is. But when something good happens to you, you guess you're lucky. A minor tragedy and it's God's fault. A miraculous blessing and it's a bit lucky. What do you make of that? — M. Scott Peck

I will miss myself in relation to others. The rareness. The exceptional differences. I will miss the gift that comes with hardship and paying the price. I will miss the tragedy of my own life. As I once spoke...emphatically, but I now repeat here, quietly - the pain, the pain is what made it so God damn beautiful. I endured. You can wait a lifetime for thirty seconds, five minutes, or for an hour to come into your life - a brief interval that makes all the suffering purposeful. In such moments of splendor and rapture - even if the rapture be stilled, the private hours and years of reckoning are unloaded, a burden lifted and the spirit feels as it did on the happiest day of its life when it was young and untormented Or rather, unconscious of the torment waiting to be ignited. — Wheston Chancellor Grove

Frances was not only grieving her sister's loss, but also striving to reconcile in her mind the tragedy with the idea of a loving God. Restless and aching, Frances climbed mountains in the Swiss Alps, where their hotel had a view of beautiful Mount Rigi. — Nancy Carpentier Brown

We live for today and have faith in tomorrow.
We've learned from experience to enjoy what we have while it's ours, because the only thing we know for sure is that nothing is for sure or forever (scholars are right fond of calling this the 'southern sense of tragedy' and our preachers call it 'God's will') — Ann Barrett Batson

God has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses. When God looks at a painful or wicked event through his narrow lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin for what it is in itself and he is angered and grieved. "I do not delight in the death of anyone, says the Lord God" (Ezek. 18:32). But when God looks at a painful or wicked event through his wide-angle lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing out from it. He sees it in all the connections and effects that form a pattern or mosaic stretching into eternity. This mosaic, with all its (good and evil) parts he does delight in (Ps. 115:3). — John Piper

The good news is we don't have to suffer alone. We don't have to carry the burdens of our messy lives alone. God is there for us. He wants to be the Comforter in Chief for the worst that life on this earth may hand us. but we need to know Him - genuinely know Him - not just when tragedy strikes. We need to know Him every moment of every day we live. We need to quit leaving it to the professionals and make know Him the most important mission of our lives. — Diane Moody

Until all students are faced by the tragedies, the contradictions and the stark questions of life, they cannot understand the need for redemption or God's redemptive action. — Reuel Howe

The Crucified One is God's standing solidarity with the suffering, the tragedy, and the disaster of all time, and God's promise that it will not have the final word. The Risen One is God's final word about the universe and what God plans to do with all suffering. — Richard Rohr

One hardly need believe that the events in your life are actually planned as bolts from the blue, sent special delivery from a deity who is testing and training you like a lab rat! And that is what we are saying when we fretfully ask, What can God be trying to teach me through this tragedy? — Robert M. Price

When Catherine told me about this (tragedy nearby), I could only say, shocked, "Dear God, that family needs grace."
She replied firmly, "That family needs casseroles," and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this _is_ grace. — Elizabeth Gilbert

We come before God to pray for the missing and the dead, and for those who loved them ... Our purpose as a nation is firm, yet our wounds as a people are recent and unhealed and lead us to pray ... This world he created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance, and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds all who die and all who mourn ... Neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth can separate us from God's love. — George W. Bush

Catholics are necessarily at war with this age. That we are not more conscious of the fact, that we so often endeavor to make an impossible peace with it
that is the tragedy. You cannot serve God and Mammon. — Eric Gill

The United States turned its back on the Jewish people and an awesome tragedy occurred, starting a pattern that continues until this day. There are literally dozens of examples like the Great Hurricane of 1938 where disasters strike America on the very day the United States meddles with God's covenant land of Israel. — John P. McTernan

No god will spare you forgiveness for loving me. — Liam Levi

I believe in One God,though you think that the gods dwell in those clouds on the Fifth Mountain.i don't want to argue whether my God is stronger or more powerful;I would speak not of our differences but of our similarities.Tragedy has united us in a single sentiment:despair.Why has that come to pass?Because we thought that everything was answered and decided in our souls,and we could accept no changes. — Paulo Coelho

sometimes,
friendship is glittery,
love is a happy story and
life is a big memory,
and sometimes,
friendship is bloody,
love is a sad storyand life is a big tragedy,
now all can say is ,
i am a star with smile as a shiny co star,
i have my cry as a sexy stand by,
every moment is my naughty darling,
oh my god life is really thrilling — Jessica Singh

Blessed be they whose lives do not taste of evil
but if some god shakes your house
ruin arrives
ruin does not leave
it comes tolling over the generations
it comes rolling the black night salt up from the ocean floor
and all your thrashed coasts groan — Anne Carson

God does not cause our misfortunes. Some are caused by bad luck, some are caused by bad people, and some are simply an inevitable consequence of our being human and being mortal, living in a world of inflexible natural laws. The painful things that happen to us are not punishments for our misbehavior, nor are they in any way part of some grand design on God's part. Because the tragedy is not God's will, we need not feel hurt or betrayed by God when tragedy strikes. We can turn to Him for help in overcoming it, precisely because we can tell ourselves that God is as outraged by it as we are. — Harold S. Kushner

LARRY
(with increasing bitter intensity, more as if he were fighting with himself than with Hickey) I'm afraid to live, am I?
and even more afraid to die! So I sit here, with my pride drowned on the bottom of a bottle, keeping drunk so I won't see myself shaking in my britches with fright, or hear myself whining and praying: Beloved Christ, let me live a little longer at any price! If it's only for a few days more, or a few hours even, have mercy, Almighty God, and let me still clutch greedily to my yellow heart this sweet treasure, this jewel beyond price, the dirty, stinking bit of withered old flesh which is my beautiful little life! (He laughs with a sneering, vindictive self-loathing, staring inward at himself with contempt and hatred. Then abruptly he makes Hickey again the antagonist.) You think you'll make me admit that to myself? — Eugene O'Neill

That's all religion is
some principle you believe in ... man has accomplished far more miracles than the God he invented. What a tragedy it is to invent a God and then suffer to keep him King. — Rod Steiger

It takes the entire Bible to help us understand all the reasons that Jesus' death on the cross was not just a failure and a tragedy but was consummate wisdom. It takes a major part of Genesis to help us understand God's purposes in Joseph's tribulations. Sometimes we may wish that God would send us our book - a full explanation! But even though we cannot know all the particular reasons for our crosses, we can look at the cross and know God is working things out. — Timothy J. Keller

Look at the Metropolitan Community Church today, the gay church, almost accepted into the World Council of Churches. Almost, the vote was against them. But they will try again and again until they get in, and the tragedy is that they would get one vote. Because they are spoken of here in Jude as being brute beasts, that is going to the baser lust of the flesh to live immorally, and so Jude describes this as apostasy. But thank God this vile and satanic system will one day be utterly annihilated and there'll be a celebration in heaven. — Jerry Falwell

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him ... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create
so that
without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating. — Pearl S. Buck

He has demonstrated how the very worst thing that has ever happened in the history of the world ended up resulting in the very best thing that has ever happened in the history of the world." "What do you mean? "I'm referring to dei-cide," he replied. "The death of God himself on the cross. At the time, nobody saw how anything good could ever result from this tragedy. And yet God foresaw that the result would be the opening of heaven to human beings. So the worst tragedy in history brought about the most glorious event in history. And if it happened there - if the ultimate evil can result in the ultimate good - it can happen elsewhere, even in our own individual lives. Here, God lifts the curtain and lets us see it. Elsewhere he simply says, 'Trust me. — Lee Strobel

The greatest tragedy is a life lived and died without knowing Father God intimately and experiencing His love personally. — Bob Parr

Let us recognize that a large fraction of our suffering and that of our fellow human beings is brought about by what we do to one another. It is humankind, not God, that had invented knives, arrows, guns, bombs, and all manner of other instruments of torture used through the ages. The tragedy of the young child killed by a drunk driver, of the innocent young man dying on the battlefield, or of the young girl cut down by a stray bullet in a crime-ridden section of a modern city can hardly be blamed on God. After all, we have somehow been given free will, the ability to do as we please. We use this ability frequently to disobey the Moral Law. And when we do so, we shouldn't then blame God for the consequences. — Francis S. Collins

God put us here to go through this kind of mental gymnastics, and He certainly put us here to enjoy our sexual lives. He put us here to ask, to try and find out the best way possible to live with our neighbors. Of course, you can go through a life not asking, and that's the tragedy: so many lives lived in moral blindness. — Dorothy Day

There is a warning. The path of God-exalting joy will cost you your life. Jesus said, "Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it." In other words, it is better to lose your life than to waste it. If you live gladly to make others glad in
God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full. This is not a book about how to avoid a wounded life, but how to avoid a wasted life. Some of you will die in the service of Christ. That will not be a tragedy. Treasuring life above Christ is a tragedy. — John Piper

It isn't that God basically wants to condemn and then finds a way to rescue some from that disaster. It is that God longs to bless, to bless lavishly, and so to rescue and bless those in danger of tragedy - and therefore must curse everything that thwarts and destroys the blessing of his world and his people. — N. T. Wright

Christians can trust God to redeem even the greatest of tragedies and the most desperate of situations. — Franklin Graham

The great test of life is to see whether we will hearken to and obey God's commands in the midst of the storms of life. It is not to endure storms, but to choose the right while they rage. And the tragedy of life is to fail in that test and so fail to qualify to return in glory to our heavenly home ... It will take unshakable faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to choose the way to eternal life. It is by using that faith we can know the will of God. It is by acting on that faith we build the strength to do the will of God. And it is by exercising that faith in Jesus Christ that we can resist temptation and gain forgiveness through the Atonement. — Henry B. Eyring

We who have grown up on a diet of honour and shame can still grasp what must seem unthinkable to people living in the aftermath of the death of God and of tragedy: that men will sacrifice their dearest love on the implacable altars of their pride. — Salman Rushdie

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender. — William Gaddis

The search for Jesus is about reconciling loss and tragedy to God and us. — W. Scott Lineberry

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

The thing is, there is no certainty in this life - in one second your entire world could shift. I'm not saying it will, but I am living proof that It can. We never prepare for tragedy and that's a good thing but my god what's it's taught me is how little we appreciate what we have or some cases once had. — Nikki Rowe

No one fights dirtier or more brutally than blood; only family knows it's own weaknesses, the exact placement of the heart. The tragedy is that one can still live with the force of hatred, feel infuriated that once you are born to another, that kinship lasts through life and death, immutable, unchanging, no matter how great the misdeed or betrayal. Blood cannot be denied, and perhaps that's why we fight tooth and claw, because we cannot - being only human - put asunder what God has joined together. — Whitney Otto

Like Abraham you will believe, like Sarah you will conceive, and like Moses you will rise from your isolation and exile. You will live again. God is determined to reverse your tragedy into transformation and crown your tomb with the testimony of a glorious resurrection. From — Dutch Sheets

No," he said after a pause, "the true art of the gods is the comic. The comic is a condescension of the divine to the world of man; it is the sublime vision, which cannot be studied, but must ever be celestially granted. In the comic the gods see their own being reflected as in a mirror, and while the tragic poet is bound by strict laws, they will allow the comic artist a freedom as unlimited as their own. They do not even withhold their own existence from his sports. Jove may favor Lucianos of Samosata. As long as your mockery is in true godly taste you may mock at the gods and still remain a sound devotee. But in pitying, or condoling with your god, you deny and annihilate him, and such is the most horrible of atheisms. — Karen Blixen

When God issues a call to us, it is always a holy call. The vocation of dying is a sacred vocation. To understand that is one of the most important lessons a Christian can ever learn. When the summons comes, we can respond in many ways. We can become angry, bitter or terrified. But if we see it as a call from God and not a threat from Satan, we are far more prepared to cope with its difficulties. — R.C. Sproul

The One who has done the greatest thing of all for you, must be concerned about you in everything, and though the clouds are thick and you cannot see His face, you know He is there. 'Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.' Now hold on to that. You say that you do not see His smile. I agree that these earth born clouds prevent my seeing Him, but He is there and He will never allow anything finally harmful to take place. Nothing can happen to you but what He allows, I do not care what it may be, some great disappointment, perhaps, or it may be an illness, it may be a tragedy of some sort, I do not know what it is, but you can be certain of this, that God permits that thing to happen to you because it is ultimately for your good. 'Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness ... ' (Hebrews 12. 11). (Spiritual Depression Its Causes and Cure, 145) — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The utter failure came at the Crucifixion in the tragic words, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' If you want to understand the full tragedy of those words you must realize what they meant: Christ saw that his whole life, devoted to the truth according to his best conviction, had been a terrible illusion. He had lived it to the full absolutely sincerely, he had made his honest experiment, but it was nevertheless a compensation. On the cross his mission deserted him. But because he had lived so fully and devotedly he won through to the Resurrection body. — Carl Jung

We may be helpless to stop bad things from happening, but perhaps God leaves us signs and road maps to help us recover and reconnect, provided we know where to look. — Jennifer Gardner Trulson

If by 'God' you have something definite in mind - a being that is loving, or jealous, or whatever - then you're faced with the question of why God's that way and not another way. And if you don't have anything very definite in mind when you talk about 'God' being behind the existence of the universe, then why even use the word? So I think religion doesn't help. It's part of the human tragedy: we're faced with a mystery we can't understand - Steven Weinberg — Jim Holt

Kylar, in the crucible of tragedy, explanations fail. When you stand before a tragedy and tell yourself that there is no sense to it, doesn't your heart break? I think that must be as hard for you as it is for me when I scream at God and demand to know why - and he says nothing. We will both survive this, Kylar. The difference is, on the other side I will have hope. — Brent Weeks

Accept dear God the soul of Dixon Hartnell, who made his own amends and who travelled his own way. He failed as we all fail, and perhaps more often than some. Yet he recognized fundamental things. Not that we are evil; for we are not. But that, by whatever name
self interest, impulse, anger, lust, or greed
we are inclined that way; and that it is our tragedy to know this can never change, our duty to try at every moment to overcome it; and our glory occasionally to succeed. — Scott Turow

Whoever lives like me doesn't die: he terminates, wilts, devegetates. The place where he was remains without him being there; the street where he walked remains without him being seen on it; the house where he lived is inhabited by not-him. That's all, and we call it nothing; but not even this tragedy of negation can be staged to applause, for we don't even know for sure if it's nothing, we, these vegetable manifestations of both truth and life, dust on both the outside and the inside of the panes, grandchildren of Destiny and stepchildren of God, who married Eternal Night when she was widowed by the Chaos that fathered us. — Fernando Pessoa

The tragedy of young-earth creationism is that it takes a relatively recent and extreme view of Genesis, applies to it an unjustified scientific gloss, and then asks sincere and well-meaning seekers to swallow this whole, despite the massive discordance with decades of scientific evidence from multiple disciplines. Is it any wonder that many sadly turn away from faith concluding that they cannot believe in a God who asks for an abandonment of logic and reason? — Francis Collins

It is a tragedy of the first magnitude that millions of people have ceased to use their hands as hands. Nature has bestowed upon us this great gift which is our hands. If the craze for machinery method continues, it is highly likely that a time will come when we shall be so incapacitated and weak that we shall begin to curse ourselves for having forgotten the use of the living machines given to us by God. — Mahatma Gandhi

I don't like feeling sorry for myself. That's not who I am. And most of the time I don't feel that way. Instead, I am grateful for having at least found you. We could have flashed by one another like two pieces of cosmic dust.
God or the universe or whatever one chooses to label the great systems of balance and order does not recognize Earth-time. To the universe, four days is no different than four billion light years. I try to keep that in mind.
But, I am, after all, a man. And all the philosophic rationalizations I can conjure up do not keep me from wanting you, every day, every moment, the merciless wail of time, of time I can never spend with you, deep within my head.
I love you, profoundly and completely. And I always will.
The last cowboy,
Robert — Robert James Waller

For many potential Bible readers, this expectation that the Bible is univocal is paralyzing. You notice what seem to be contradictions or tensions between different voices in the text. You can't find an obvious way to reconcile them. You figure that it must be your problem. You don't know how to read it correctly, or you're missing something. You're not holy enough to read the Holy Bible. It might even be sacrilege for you to try. If the Bible is God's perfect infallible Word, then any misunderstanding or ambiguity must be the result of our own depravity. That is, our sinful nature as fallen creatures is what separates us from God, and therefore from God's Word. So you either give up or let someone holier than thou tell you "what it really says." I think that's tragic. You're letting someone else impoverish it for you, when in fact you have just brushed up against the rich polyvocality of biblical literature. — Timothy Beal

The cross, the zenith of history. All of the past pointed to it, and all of the future would depend upon it. It's the great triumph of heaven: God is on the earth. And it is the great tragedy of earth: man has rejected God. — Max Lucado

In times of deep despair we dethrone Him through our doubt and find Him a failure through our fears. We cling to what we know, see, and feel, and then declare that God just isn't there. We trust ourselves, instead of God. And that . . . is the greatest tragedy. But, God is greater than our sin . . . He's greater than our pride. — Cherie Hill

It is a tragedy that many of God's people have conformed themselves to the world and its thinking, rather than being transformed by the renewing of their minds. — Billy Graham

Death isn't a tragedy to God, only to those left behind. — Patricia Briggs

I love songs about horses, railroads, land, Judgment Day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. And Mother. And God. — Johnny Cash

It is both mysterious and miraculous that roughly the same intelligence necessary to flake a barbed spearpoint is sufficient to discover the theorems of mathematics. In a different universe, it might have been otherwise. And so human beings would have been spared the tragedy of existing half as ape and half as god. — David Zindell

All theology is a doomed but necessary attempt to express the inexpressible. God is the elusive mystery we try to capture and convey in language, but how can that ever be done? If the word water is not itself drinkable, how can the words we use to express the mystery of God be themselves absolute? They are metaphors, analogies, figures of speech, yet religious people have slaughtered and condemned each other over these experimental uncertainties. Our glory and agony as humans is that we long to find words that will no longer be words, mere signifiers, but the very experience they are trying to signify; and our tragedy is that we never succeed. This is the anguish that lies at the heart of all religion, because, though our words can describe our thirst for the absolute, they can never satisfy it. — Richard Holloway

Money cannot save you from tragedy, or give you control in a chaotic world. Only God can do that. What breaks the power of money over us is not just redoubled effort to follow the example of Christ. Rather, it is deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ, what you have in him, and then living out the changes that that understanding makes in your heart - the seat of your mind, will, and emotions. Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding and identity, our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without a complete change of heart will be superficial and fleeting. — Timothy Keller