Food for thought
'God creates us free to be selfish, but he adds a mechanism which will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in the world, and that mechanism is called "suffering". To put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Why must it be pain? Why can't He wake us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be woken is the dream that all is well. The most dangerous illusion of them all is the illusion that all is well. Self-sufficiency is the enemy of salvation. If you have no need of God, you will not seek Him. If you do not seek Him, you will not find Him. God loves us, so He makes us the gift of suffering. Through suffering we release our hold on the toys of this world, and know that our time lies in another world. For believe me, this world that seems to us so substantial, is no more than the shadowlands. Real life has not begun yet.' - C. S. Lewis
