Suffering Is Never for Nothing
by Elisabeth Elliot (B&H Books, 2019)
Elliot’s widely known credentials to talk about suffering prompted me to read this book, which is based on a transcript of a talk she gave. I appreciated her pragmatic advice interwoven with her own accounts of how she lived out her faith when her suffering was at its most intense. And her definition of suffering has perfect economy of concepts: “Suffering is having what you don’t want, and not having what you do want.”
My takeaway: Blessed is she who does not get what she asked from God, for she has the opportunity to trust without seeing, and to seek and find God’s love, independent of outcomes.