Drops Like Stars

“THE ACHE IS UNIVERSAL.

The ache reminds us that things aren’t how they’re supposed to be. The ache cuts through all the static, all the ways we avoid having to actually feel things. The ache reassures us that we’re not the only ones who feel this way…

BUT SUFFERING, SUFFERING UNITES.

It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor or black or white or right or left or young or old---if you have the same disease as someone else or if you both have a daughter with an eating disorder or have a brother in jail or had a spouse die or recently were fired…

you have a bond that transcends whatever differences you have.

That’s what suffering does.

THIS IS THE ART OF SOLIDARITY…

The first Christians insisted that when Jesus died on the cross, this wasn’t just another execution by the Roman Empire.

They believed this was the divine, in flesh and blood, hanging there on the cross, bloody, thirsty, suffering.

A god who is not somewhere else—remote, detached, distant—but among us, feeling what we feel, aching how we ache.

SUFFERING LIKE US.

‘It makes all the difference to know there’s someone else screaming alongside you—and that’s the point of the incarnation. I can see that so clearly now. God came into the world and screamed alongside us’ (Starbridge by Susan Howatch).

Is the cross God’s way of saying,

‘I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL?’” –Rob Bell

 

 

Thank you Rob. Thank you. People can say what they want. They can think what they want. They can spin what they want about you and your words and beliefs. But in most of your words I find somewhere that makes sense. Somewhere that feels like home. Somewhere that feels like Truth. And Drops Like Stars is definitely a book I can’t live without. Thank you. God bless.