End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781557255631)

"The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering, but a supernatural use for it." -Simone Weil

"Like most people I, too, have been blindsided by personal grief now and again over the years. And I have an increasingly keen sense that, wherever I am, someone nearby is suffering now.

For that reason, I lately have settled in to mull the matter over, gathering my troubled wits to undertake a difficult essay, more like what we used to call an assay, really--an earnest inquiry. I am thinking of it just now as a study in suffering, by which I hope to find some sense in affliction, hoping--just as I have come to hope about experience in general--to make something of it."

Is there meaning in our afflictions?

With the thoughtfulness of a pilgrim and the prose of a poet, Scott Cairns takes us on a soul-baring journey through "the puzzlement of our afflictions." Probing ancient Christian wisdom for revelation in his own pain, Cairns challenges us toward a radical revision of the full meaning and breadth of human suffering.

Clear-eyed and unsparingly honest, this new addition to the literature of suffering is reminiscent of The Year of Magical Thinking as well as the works of C. S. Lewis. Cairns points us toward hope in the seasons of our afflictions, because "in those trials in our lives that we do not choose but press through--a stillness, a calm, and a hope become available to us."

Author: Scott Cairns
ISBN-10: 1557255636
ISBN-13: 9781557255631
Publisher: Paraclete Press (MA)
Language: English
Published: 11/01/2009
Pages: 144
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.25lbs
Size: 6.70h x 4.50w x 0.70d
Award: Christianity Today Book Award - Award of Merit

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 10/01/2009 pg. 66
Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/02/2009 pg. 29
Christian Century 01/12/2010 pg. 43
Christianity Today 02/01/2010 pg. 62