Taconic-Berkshire Region

Please Join Us for Fun with Friends
Stories, and Singing!

Summer Playgroup at
The Christian Community Church
for 3 to 5 year olds

July 14 through August 27th • 
Monday through Wednesday 
9:00 am to 12:00 pm

For more information contact Maryellen
at 518 965 6464

The Beauty of the World and Human Suffering
Sermon by Rev. Carol Kelly

“ A poem is made not out of language but of experience, and the defining aspect of human experience is the constant collision between our wishes and reality, the sharp violation of our expectations, the demolition of our plans. We call this suffering. Suffering is the price we pay for a consciousness capable of love and the loss of love, of hope and the devastation of hope. “
~ Maria Popova (on why AI cannot write poetry)

If one were to write a book entitled “The Painless Life” it could possibly be a bestseller, except for the fact that the pages would be either blank or untrue.

We walk into each day in this life knowing that we will carry suffering, our own and the suffering of others, and that we will also probably, unintentionally cause it. On the world stage the suffering in our time is almost overwhelming.

And because it is high summer, the contrast between the suffering in the world and this most beautiful world that God has created, with its waterfalls and mountains, rivers, lakes, fruits and flowers, stands before us as a riddle.

How can God allow so much beauty and so much suffering at the same time?

How can we hold this in our consciousness and how can we understand suffering as part of creation?

We have been given consciousness to comprehend both the beauty and the pain, the light and the darkness as manifestations of Spiritual laws, working as dynamic tension to bring about a new creation.

Perhaps we experience the “burning quality” of pain, which can create a space in us for compassion. Perhaps we begin to realize that we are even the cause of our own suffering. We may learn great lessons from this!  The Adversary works to rob us of the opportunity of awakening by encouraging comfort and self-seeking. But without suffering, we would be very shallow and poor in spirit.

Christ Himself did not escape suffering but willingly took it upon Himself in freedom, for the salvation of human beings. When our hearts are “burning” and our souls are in turmoil, that is when we can find the path that leads us forward, that leads us closer to Christ. Longing for the reuniting of our true Being with the Being of Christ, we find ourselves “decreasing” without losing ourselves, so that He can “increase” in us. The more we can make space for Him, the better.

In this time of glorious summer, may we find the “space” to slow down and take in the beauty and glory of the world, to be re-enlivened and re-awakened by it. This is our “recharging” time, when the Spiritual World works with us that we may become ever more truly human in the highest sense.