Dr Paul Allen

I could strengthen you with my mouth,  and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain. (Job 16:5) Job’s sufferings reveal Job’s heart. What he says in suffering opens a window into his soul. He is under intense pressure. He has lost his wealth, position, children, and health. But the worst pressure is that his so-called comforters accuse him of unforgiven sin. They say that his accursed state proves he is under the curse of God; the fact that he is “shriveled... up” is “a witness against” him (Job 16:8). There is something of Job’s comforters in us all. We hear of someone’s misfortune, and we can hardly help but wonder if, in some way, they deserved it; in the same breath, the thought occurs to us that perhaps our own happy state shows we deserve that too. How wrong we can be! In this speech, Job's heart is described in two remarkable ways. First, despite how badly they are treating him, Job longs to comfort and bring solace to his friends (v. 5). Far from wanting to “get back a...

Your darkness can one day bring someone light. A person who’s been through a divorce has the compassion and words needed to help somebody going through a divorce. A person who’s been through abuse, rape, or an addiction can genuinely understand how to help someone else in a similar situation.  And because you made it, God will cause your wounds to glow in the dark of somebody else’s life. And when you begin to share your story with them, hope will get in their soul, and they will start to believe that they can make it.   Don’t waste what you’ve gone through or allow it to make you bitter. If God lets you walk through it, it’s because He’s still God and has a plan. On five different occasions, the Apostle Paul was beaten with 39 stripes. That’s 195 scars on his body. Paul said, “Three times I was beaten with rods.  One time, I was stoned and left for dead. Three times, I suffered shipwrecks. I knew what it was to be afloat in the ocean a full day and night. I thought ...

Despite the Paul McCartney jingle echoing through our department stores this season, many of us will not be “simply having a wonderful Christmastime.” Much of our Christmas joy will be met, and made to sing, shoulder to shoulder with dissonant sorrows. I’ve had cancer since 2018. I received my Stage 4 diagnosis in December 2020—just in time for Christmas to be included in that year's crookedness. This blow came just a month before our third child, Jane Ridley Wright, was born. We soon learned our “baby Jane” had been born with a regressive and rare gene mutation. I bear witness that the hope and joy of Christmas are not easily held in hand with the harshness of life under the sun. It’s a weary task to unify everything: birth and disability, sacred and profane, transfiguration and tragedy, cancer and Christmas.  But, as Leo Tolstoy observes, “All the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” Samwise Gamgee agrees: “It’s like in the great stories, Mr Frodo. The ones that really...

On the last day of his vacation, Rob Moll leaned in to kiss his wife, Clarissa, before heading out for a hike in Mount Rainier National Park. “Have fun,” she whispered. “I will,” Rob said. He never returned.  On July 19, 2019, Rob Moll fell to his death on that mountain. Clarissa was left to raise four children alone. She writes, “All of the life we loved together vanished in a moment.” In the three years since Clarissa has walked honestly with Christ and pointed fellow sufferers to the hope that is both here and now as well as for heaven. In her book Beyond the Darkness: A Gentle Guide for Living with Grief and Thriving After Loss, Clarissa Moll offers the bereaved much-needed empathy and seeks to show them and those who would walk beside them how grieving souls can flourish after loss. Sorrow is a dark and painful road. You don’t need to walk it alone. The Bible says that “God is near to the brokenhearted,” but what does that look like when you’re lost in the darkness of agonizin...