Suffering

Check out all of YMI’s content pieces tagged under Suffering. We hope you’d benefit from the written and visual content we have under this topic: Suffering.

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ODJ: toxic environment


Two dolphins—Shadow and Chelmers—died of a drug overdose at a marine park in Switzerland. Forensic experts suppose that partygoers at a nearby club placed a heroinlike substance into the dolphins’ tank water. The dolphin trainers who found Chelmers described him as “shaking all over and foaming at the mouth.” Based on these symptoms and the presence of buprenorphine in the dolphins’ bo

ODJ: wounded


My daughter consistently teaches me that perspective is everything when it comes to relationships. Watching her navigate the ins and outs of adolescence, I see a mirror for my own misunderstandings —what I hear is not always what was intended. She finds it easy to understand the heart behind the words coming from friends she trusts. Even the most benign of statements from someone who has wounded

ODJ: devoured

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I’m sure you’ve heard your share of extreme weight loss plans. But ingesting a parasite? A newspaper has reported that some people in Hong Kong have resorted to using parasitic worms to peel off the pounds. The worms allow people to keep eating what they want and still shed weight. But the giant intestinal roundworms, which can grow up to 15 inches in length, lay up to 200,000 eggs a day. They

ODJ: yet to come


My sister might take a year off from work to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I told her, “Well, be ready to check out the hills so that you know where to run to during the great tribulation.

ODJ: a Psalm for the Struggle

It was the kind of take-away restaurant where you stand in line, place your order and then step aside to wait for your food to appear. After I did just that, a young man took my place at the front of the queue. He ordered his food by using gestures and broken words. Paying was difficult for him because one of his wrists was turned so that his fingers pointed back to his body. And walking to a tabl

ODJ: correcting blind spots

In The Call to Joy and Pain, Ajith Fernando, a Christian leader from Sri Lanka, wrote: “The church in each culture has its own special challenges—theological blind spots that hinder Christians from growing to full maturity in Christ. . . . I think one of the most serious theological blind spots in [today’s] western church is a defective understanding of suffering. . . . The ‘good life’

ODJ: suffering with God


Pain. We take pills to ease it, hold prayer meetings to heal it, develop strategies to avoid it and think up philosophies to explain it. We rarely, however, consider suffering as part of God’s plan for our lives.
Classic spiritual authors take a different approach to suffering. Take the 17th century monk Brother Lawrence, for example. Lame in one leg and acquainted with illness, in The Practi

ODJ: counting the cost


Jesus’ good friend Lazarus had died (John 11:14,17). And so He performed an amazing miracle by raising Lazarus from the dead (vv.43-44)—leading many who came to the funeral to believe in Him (v.45). But the Pharisees and priests responded differently. From that time on, they began to plot Jesus’ death (v.53). 
News of the spectacular miracle spread throughout the thousands of Jewish pilgri

ODJ: the God who suffered


People tell me that you can turn any smoothie or milkshake into a snack loaded with vitamins and antioxidants. The idea is to sneak vegetables (spinach, cauliflower, beetroot or other healthy veggies) into the beverages of unsuspecting drinkers. They think they’re only imbibing their mango and honey treat, but they’re also downing green veggies. The beverage may be in the form of a smoothie, b