Terryl L. Givens

In the Garden story, good and evil are found on the same tree, not in separate orchards. Good and evil give meaning and definition to each other. If God, like us, is susceptible to immense pain, He is, like us, the greater in His capacity for happiness. The presence of such pain serves the larger purpose of God's master plan, which is to maximize the capacity for joy, or in other words, "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." He can no more foster those ends in the absence of suffering and evil than one could find the traction to run or the breath to sing in the vacuum of space. God does not instigate pain or suffering, but He can weave it into His purposes. "God's power rests not on totalizing omnipotence, but on His ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss into wisdom, understanding, and joy.

As an inmate of a concentration camp, Corrie Ten Boom heard a commotion, and saw a short distance away a prison guard mercilessly beating a female prisoner. __hat can we do for these people?_ Corrie whispered. __how them that love is greater,_ Betsie replied. In that moment, Corrie realized her sister__ focus was on the prison guard, not the victim she was watching. Betsie saw the world through a different lens. She considered the actions of greatest moral gravity to be the ones we originate, not the ones we suffer.

God resides most strongly and evidently where science has not yet progressed to go... And if this is true then it follows that God resides everywhere and in everything.

...our minds are driven to answer questions that far transcend the bounds of our own lives.

Those mortals who operate in the grey area between conviction and incredulity are in a position to choose most meaningfully, and with most meaningful consequences [_] Perhaps only a doubter can appreciate the miracle of life without end.

What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love.

What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is, in the final analysis, an action that is positively laden with moral significance.

There are many kinds of silences and not all signify absence or vacancy....Those moments are but temporary ebbs before the flow of meaning rushes in to fill the space....God may be speaking 'in ways we have yet to recognize as speech.