John Bryant

We cannot answer suffering. And yet suffering demands an answer. Otherwise, our world is meaningless and intolerable: all is lost, nothing is safe, and we don't matter. If Jesus is the answer to suffering, what kind of answer is Jesus? Everything that could be taken from a person was taken from him. The worst things a person could be made to see and feel were seen and felt by Christ. All this came to a point in the nails driven into his hands and became a word that cannot be unspoken--his body broken and his blood poured out for us. Suffering has been made holy by Christ's proximity to it. This is the story of Christ's nearness to my own suffering--my mental breakdown, my journey to the psych ward, my long, slow, painful recovery--and how Christ will use even our agony and despair to turn us into servants and guests of the mercy offered in his gospel.

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