Ponder: "outside God, there is no hope"

“Outside God there is no hope.  Remove God and you have not touched one of the sufferings of the world.  You have perhaps added one.  You have not touched one of the pains and pangs.  You have only removed the One who might help.  Their disease is untouched.  You have taken away the remedy.  Outside Christ, the problem of suffering is insoluble.  The dethrone God in a throe of anger and bewilderment is merely to hasten death by indeliberate suicide.”

Vincent McNabb, OP, The Craft of Suffering (1936), 17.

Ponder: "Thou didst stumble to a throne"

The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak;

They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;

But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,

And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone. 

“Jesus of the Scars” by Edward Shillito, qtd. in Liz Hoare, “A Reflection on Philippians 2:1-18.”