Psalm 119:71 (NIV) It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.
- What has been the easiest season in your life—that period where it was closest to, “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.”
- What has been the most difficult season of life? It may be easier to give several answers.
- Do you look back on that season and say, “It was good.” Why or why not?
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously wrote, “Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.” Can you relate?
- What good have you seen come from the difficult seasons of life?
- Still, should we avoid difficulty if it is in our power to do so?
- Another quote; this one from Lewis: “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” What is it about pain that gets our attention?
- How can we support each other in seasons of pain?
- What do we want to avoid doing in seasons of pain?
- How can we pray for each other today?
