The Question That Never Goes Away

Finding Meaning in the Midst of Suffering In his classic book Where Is God When It Hurts, Philip Yancey gave us permission to doubt, reasons not to abandon faith, and practical ways to reach out to hurting people. And now, thirty years after writing his first book, Yancey revisits our cry of “Why, God” in three places stunned into silence by the calamities that have devastated them. At some point all of us will face the challenges to faith Yancey writes about and look for the comfort and hope he describes. There are reasons to ask, once again, the question that never goes away: Where is God when we suffer? And Yancey, once again, leads us to find faith when it is most severely put to the test.

Examines the question of why God allows suffering, sharing what the author learned in his meetings with those who have experienced loss in major tragedies to illustrate how pain often strengthens the sufferer's faith in God.

Some days, the news seems too much to bear. Yet another tsunami or earthquake or flood or fire or war atrocity. One more gun-toting madman stalking young people in idyllic Norway or moviegoers in Colorado or schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut. We turn off the news only to get a phone call about expectant parents with a stillborn baby, or a loved one whose cancer has returned. Really, God? we ask. This again? If we have faith in God, it gets shaken to the core. What was God doing in the moment when that tragedy could have been prevented? If we can't trust God to keep our children safe or our loved ones from dying in agony, what can we trust God for? In his classic book Where Is God When It Hurts?, Philip Yancey gave us permission to doubt, reasons not to abandon faith, and practical ways to reach out to hurting people. His visits to three particularly traumatised places in 2012 raised the old problems with new urgency; now, with new perspectives and stories gathered across nearly thirty-five years, once again he tackles the hard questions head-on. Coming to the problem as a veteran pilgrim, Yancey faces the issues that often undermine faith with his trademark honesty, yet finds comfort and hope along the way. Most of all, he shows that Christians have an important role to play in bringing healing to a deeply wounded world, and discovers that there are good reasons to ask, once again, the question that never goes away.

Some days, the news seems too much to bear. Yet another tsunami or earthquake or flood or fire or war atrocity. One more gun-toting madman stalking young people in idyllic Norway or moviegoers in Colorado or schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut. We turn off the news only to get a phone call about expectant parents with a stillborn baby, or a loved one whose cancer has returned. If we have faith in God, it gets shaken to the core. What was God doing in the moment when that tragedy could have been prevented? If we can't trust God to keep our children safe or our loved ones from dying in agony, what can we trust God for? In his classic book WHERE IS GOD WHEN IT HURTS?, Philip Yancey gave us permission to doubt, reasons not to abandon faith, and practical ways to reach out to hurting people. Now, with new perspectives and stories gathered across nearly twenty-five years, once again he tackles the hard questions head-on. His visits to three places in 2012 raised the old problems with new urgency. More veteran pilgrim than curious journalist in his later years, Yancey faces with his trademark honesty the issues that often undermine faith, yet he emerges with comfort and hope. Along the way, he shows that Christians have an important role to play in bringing healing to a deeply wounded world. There are hopeful reasons to ask, once again, the question that never goes away...

The title of Dr. Harris' book suggests that life is like a two-sided coin: it can be an Ocean of Love but can also be a Sea of Troubles. The subtitle clarifies this paradox: first, there are many signs of God's reality and activity in the world, and the first section of the book examines ways in which people are aware of God as both a creative and immanent presence in life. The "signs" of God are not philosophical "proofs" but empirical realities accessible to all people. In the second section, the biblical responses to suffering in the world are explored--through both Old and New Testaments. In the third section the writings of two modern apologists, C. S. Lewis and Philip Yancey, are assessed, and then finally there is a chapter of interviews with people who have known suffering in their lives.

The acclaimed debut novel by the author of Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts “A taut tale of ever deepening and quickening suspense.” —O, the Oprah Magazine “Explosive . . . Both a propulsive mystery and a profound examination of a mixed-race family.” —Entertainment Weekly “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.