A verse from the Bible.



"God never gives you more than you can bear".  From the Book of Baloney, Chapter 1, Verse 1.

 It is not from the Bible.  Nor is it congruent with the overall teaching of the Bible. 

 But it gets trotted out by well meaning but stupid people in the face of apparently unbearable tragedy and suffering.

 Your child committed suicide but "God never gives you more than you can bear".  

 So God knows that I can bear the searing pain of a teenage suicide?  Such horrid nonsense.

 The one you love most is being slowly brought to death by an insidious and creeping cancer, but "God never gives you more than you can bear".  

 Oh thank you God.  I will bear the suffering of my best beloved, and I hope that she/he can also bear it.

 "God never gives you more than you can bear".  Tell that to the poor people of Yemen who are being torn to shreds by the bombs, missiles and bullets (courtesy of the U.K. and U.S.A. governments).

 Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of our displaced brothers and sisters who live in often squalid refugee camps in Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Jordan etc.   Or in Bangladesh.  Or in Kenya. Or in Uganda. Or in France.   Or to those who barely exist in the detention centres of the U.S.A. and the U.K.

 "God never gives you more than you can bear"  If this be so God is a sadist.
The late and great Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Thomas "Tip" O'Neill famously said "all politics are local".

 He was on the ball.  My passion in this blog is routed in the  local.

 In the past three months two of my contemporary friends have been plunged into the deepest  pits of grief because of the deaths of their adult children, in both cases because of soul destroying addictions: one to alcohol, the other to addictive drugs.

 In both cases there are bereaved children.  

 My soul is seared. My friends' souls are destroyed.

 I would be no more than an stupid Pastor (or an idiotic f-cktard)  if I were to to offer comfort by quoting the book of Baloney Chapter 1, Verse 1  "God never gives you more than you can bear".

 The worst I can do is to offer advice.

 The best I can do is to listen to their grief.

 Listen this year, next year, and the many later years. 

 God has not given them more than they can bear. Oh No! Oh No!

 But God has given me two ears with which to listen.

 God is in the listening.

   







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