num_pages: 224
description: This book is not a before and after story.Our culture treats suffering like a problem to fix a blight to hide or the sad start of a transformation story. We silently secretly wither under the pressure of living as though suffering is a predicament we can avoid or annihilate by having enough faith or trying harder. When your prayers for healing haven't been answered the fog of depression isn't lifting your marriage is ending in divorce or grief won't go away it's easy to feel you've failed God or worse he's failed you. If God loves us why does he allow us to hurt?Over a decade ago chronic illness plunged therapist and writer K.J. Ramsey straight into this paradox. Before her illness faith made sense. But when pain came and never left K.J. had to find a way across the widening canyon that seemed to separate God's goodness from her excruciating circumstances.She wanted to conquer suffering. Instead she encountered the God who chose it. She wanted to make pain past-tense. Instead God invited her into a bigger story.This Too Shall Last offers an antidote to our cultural idolatry of effort and ease. Through personal story and insights from neuroscience and theology Ramsey invites us to let our tears become lenses of the wonder that before God ever rescues us he stands in solidarity with us. We are all mid-story in circumstances we did not choose wondering when our hard things will end and where grace will come if they don't. Together we can encounter grace in the middle where living with suffering that lingers can mean receiving God's presence that lasts.What if the church treated suffering like a story to tell rather than a secret to keep until it passes?
language: English
title: This Too Shall Last: Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers
publisher: Zondervan