The valley of the shadow of death. It is a valley where the sun's rays often seem to be blotted out. To approach it is to tremble. We would prefer to walk around it, to seek a safe bypass. But men and women of faith can enter that valley without fear.
R. C. Sproul
Ligonier Ministries
The tearful praying Christian, whose distress prevent his words, will be clearly understood by the Most High.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The Spurgeon Archive
To every toiling, heavy-laden sinner, Jesus says, "Come to me and rest". But there are many toiling, heavy-laden believers, too. For them this same invitation is meant. Note well the words of Jesus, if you are heavy-laden with your service, and do not mistake it. It is not, "Go, labour on," as perhaps you imagine. On the contrary, it is stop, turn back, "Come to me and rest." Never, never did Christ send a heavy laden one to work; never, never did He send a hungry one, a weary one, a sick or sorrowing one, away on any service. For such the Bible only says, "Come, come, come."
James Hudson Taylor
James Hudson Taylor Biography
Until our master summons us, not a hair on our head can perish, not a moment of our life be snatched from us. When He sends for us, it should seem but the message that the child is wanted at home.
Anthony Thorold
The best we can hope for in this life is a knothole peek at the shining realities ahead. Yet a glimpse is enough. It's enough to convince our hearts that whatever sufferings and sorrows currently assail us aren't worthy of comparison to that which waits over the horizon.
Joni Eareckson Tada
Joni and Friends
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The Treasure Within Our Tears (with Memorial Tear Pin) By William C. Wacker This is the story of the author's personal journey through grief to healing and hope. In the months following his father's unexpected death, his students' questions and his own grief forced him to look in a new way at familiar Scripture texts. These Scriptures took on a new meaning and a new power. They healed him and consoled him. This book is both his story and the story of all human beings. Mary Magdalen and the disciples on the road to Emmaus reveal their own struggles with death and grief and share their great joy in discovering the triumph of love over death. Love has triumphed over death - and God, who is love, is the treasure we find within our tears. Includes a free pewter memorial tear pin. |
He comes to us in the brokenness of our health,in the shipwreck of our family lives, in the loss of all possible peace of mind, even in the very thick of our sins. He saves us in our disasters, not from them. He emphatically does not promise to meet only the odd winner of the self-improvement lottery. He meets us all in our endless and inescapable losing.
Robert Farrar Capon
Short Biography
I perceive we postpone all our joys of Christ, till He and we be in our own house above, thinking that there is nothing of it here to be sought or found, but only hope and fair promises; and that Christ will give us nothing here but tears, sadness, crosses; and that we shall never feel the smell of the flowers of that high garden of paradise above, till we come there. Nay, but I find it possible to find young glory, and a young green paradise of joy even here. We dream of hunger in Christ's house, while we are here, although He alloweth feasts to all the bairns within God's household.
Samuel Rutherford
Selected Letters
Distress of soul and grief of heart can only bring on destruction of body. Joy alone is a healer, and ye can have it in the darkest hour if ye will force thy soul to rise to Me in worship and adoration. I have not failed thee and ye have not failed Me. Remember that I am in the midst when ye praise me. Never let any kind of anxiety crowd out thy praises.
Frances J. Roberts
Come Away My Beloved
Death is the sinner's penalty but the saint 's promotion.
Anonymous
It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.
(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
Into The Wardrobe
The way we view death determines, to a surprising degree, the way we live our lives.
Billy Graham, Facing Death and the Life After
Billy Graham Organization
God sometimes shuts the door and shuts us in, that He may speak, perchance through grief or pain, and softly, heart to heart, above the din, may tell some precious thought to us again.
Anonymous
In a way I wish I could take to heaven my old, tattered Everest and Jennings wheelchair. I would point to the empty seat and say, "Lord, for decades I was paralyzed in this chair. But it showed me how paralyzed You must have felt to be nailed to Your Cross. My limitations taught me something about the limitations You endured when You laid aside your robes of state and put on the indignity of human flesh." At that point, with my strong and glorified body, I might sit in it, rub the armrests with my hands, look up at Jesus, and add, "The weaker I felt in this chair, the harder I leaned on You. And the harder I leaned, the more I discovered how strong You are. Thank you, Jesus for learning obedience in your suffering...You gave me grace to learn obedience in mine."
Joni Eareckson Tada
Joni and Friends
Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones. And when you have finished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.
I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain.
John Henry Newman
Biography
Death is not extinguishing the light from the Christian; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.
Anonymous
Christ is the Son of God. He died to atone for men's sin, and after three days rose again. This is the most important fact in the universe. I die believing in Christ.
Watchman Nee
Website
The only difference in death between a Christian and one who is not is that the Christian is ready to meet Jesus. A Christian is dead already - dead to the world, but alive to Christ. Death for you as a child of God is to fall asleep in His arms and awake in the other world, alive forever beyond the power of pain, safe forever from all sickness and suffering.
Winkie Pratney
Ministry of Helps
Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody of East Northfield, is dead. Don't you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now; I shall have gone up higher, that is all, out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal- a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint; a body fashioned like unto His glorious body.
Dwight L Moody
Brief Biography
I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them and that is faith in Jesus Christ. If they had that and I had not given them a single shilling, they would have been rich; and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they would be poor indeed.
Patrick Henry
Biography
Your sorrow itself shall be turned into joy. Not the sorrow to be taken away, and joy to be put in its place, but the very sorrow which now grieves you shall be turned into joy. God not only takes away the bitterness and gives sweetness in its place, but turns the bitterness into sweetness itself.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The Spurgeon Archive
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It's Okay to Cry: A Parent's Guide to Helping Children Through the Losses of Life By H. Norman Wright This book offers practical help for parents. It explains the symptoms of loss and unresolved grief so that parents can recognize them and walk along-side their children on the path to recovery. Softcover, 216 pages. WaterBrook Press. |
Hudson Taylor, founder of China Inland Mission, in the closing months of his life said to a friend, "I am so weak. I can't read my Bible. I can't even pray. I can only lie still in God's arms like a little child and trust."
James Hudson Taylor
James Hudson Taylor Biography
In order to emerge from a state of loss and grief, and begin a new life, people need not so much a therapist as friends who are prepared to walk with them.
Jean Vanier
Biography
When it comes time to die, make sure that all you have to do is die.
Jim Elliot
Brief Biography
Since the last communion here, one of our dear helpers in this presbytery from whose lips you used to hear the joyful sound, is gone away to the communion-table above; and glory be to God that he got a full gale of heavenly wind, to drive him in with holy joy and triumph to the harbor of glory.
Ralph Erskine
Brief Biography
I cannot pray any more. As soon as I begin, my prayers are all turned into hallelujahs. I would have esteemed it a privilege if God had permitted me to spend my remaining days in supplications for my friends; but as soon as I open my mouth, it is all glory, glory, glory!
Anonymous Christian, at a very old age, on her deathbed
Many people dread death, and lament that they have not "dying grace." Of course, they will not have dying grace when they are in good health, in the midst of life's duties, with death far in advance. Why should they have it then? Grace for duty is what they need then, living grace; then dying grace when they come to die.
Anonymous
The Scriptures teach us the best way of living, the noblest way of suffering, and the most comfortable way of dying!
John Flavel
Biography and Online Works
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Let Me Grieve, But Not Forever By Verdell Davis This deeply moving book, gleaned from journals which author Verdell Davis kept during the loss of her husband, offers a source of hope and healing for anyone experiencing grief. With remarkable honesty, courage and generosity, she shares how to examine grief and ultimately find healing in the process. 10th Anniversary edition. Recommended Christian Books & Resources For Those In Grief and Their Loved Ones |
Jesus says, "Cry over your pains, and you will discover that I'm right there in your tears, and you will be grateful for my presence in your weakness." Ministry means to help people become grateful for life even with pain. That gratitude can send into the world precisely to the places where people are in pain. The minister, the disciple of Jesus, goes where there is pain not because he is a masochist or she is a sadist, but because God is hidden in the pain.
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Nouwen Centre
I miss my wife in numberless ways and shall miss her yet more and more, but as a child of God and as a servant of the Lord Jesus I bow. I'm satisfied with the will of my heavenly Father. I seek by perfect submission to his holy will to glorify Him and kiss continually the hand that has thus afflicted me. ( Written after his wife's death)
George Muller
George Muller Foundation
More and more the distinction between prayer and the rest of life seemed to be vanishing for Betsie. (As Corrie observed her sister, Betsie, in her last days)
Corrie Ten Boom
Corrie Ten Boom Museum
The valley of the shadow of death holds no darkness for the child of God. There must be light, else there could be no shadow. Jesus is the light. He has overcome death.
Dwight L Moody
Brief Biography
When death has been brought upon a saint, we ought not to think that an evil has happened to him or her, but a thing indifferent, which is an evil to a wicked person, while to the good it is rest and freedom from evils.
John Cassian [5th C.]
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
Samuel Johnson
Informational Website
Afraid? Of what? To feel the spirit's glad release? To pass from pain to perfect peace, the strife and strain of life to cease? Afraid of what? --- Afraid? Of what? Afraid to see the Saviour's face, to hear His welcome, and to trace the Glory - Gleam from wounds of Grace? Afraid of that?? Afraid? Of what? A flash - a crash - a pierced heart; darkness - light - O Heaven's art! A wound of His counterpart! Afraid of that? --- Afraid? Of what? To enter Heaven's Rest, and yet to serve the Master blest, from service good to service best? Afraid of that?? Afraid? Of what? To do by death what life could not -- Baptize with death a stony plot, till souls shall blossom from that spot? Afraid of that??
E. H. Hamilton
It is a precious thing beyond all words - especially in the hour of death - that we have a God whose nature is such that what pleases Him is not our work for Him but our need for Him.
John Piper
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hugs: Daily Inspirations Words of Comfort, 365 Devotions to Inspire Your Day By Howard Books Comfort is an easy thing to define but can be difficult to grasp-especially in our troubled world. All around are challenges, some great and some small, and we all feel weighed down by obligations that at times threaten to overwhelm. When the stress presses in, we seek comfort, and this little book points to a very big God who is the eternal source of peace and hope. Each day of the year offers an inspirational message, an uplifting scripture, and a peace-filled quote. These words of comfort are fitting for experiences from minor sadness to profound grief. It is the perfect gift for anyone going through the sadness of illness, job loss, the death of a loved one, or any of the many disappointments of life. In a world of pain, loss, and wrong turns, the need for gentle words of hope, courage, peace, and comfort is everywhere. Because God is a God of comfort, the messages in this little book offer a big hug of comfort and the promise of better things to come. |
No wise man will be contented to die, if he thinks he is to go into a state of punishment. Nay, no wise man will be contented to die, if he thinks he is to fall into annihilation: for however unhappy any man's existence may be, he yet would rather have it, than not exist at all. No, there is no rational principle by which a man can die contented, but a trust in the mercy of God, through the merits of Jesus Christ.
Samuel Johnson
Informational Website
Christian Quotes that speak of God's comfort.
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