small group, week 6 of 7

I missed but heard from others that the theme of 'Suffering' brought lots of memories of times when it was not clear where God was; why me, and so on. And yet such times focus your attention on God's purposes and so forth. The opposite case, when everything is golden, seems much less prone to bring God into one's mind.

I am reminded of the observation about Great Literature: that all great stories feature one or more protagonists struggling with obstacles before receiving resolution from the dramatic tension and other complicating factors. By that logic, the conflict areas of the world these past 4-5 generations would seem ripe for producing stories out of the suffering, collective and personal: Korean peninsula, Japan and China. Then there is the Soviet period of Gulags and Stalin before that. Cambodia, Ruanda, Bosnia, Holocaust and on and on; not to mention indigenous peoples whose liveihoods have been altered.