Matthew Archbold on Love, Suffering, and Grace

(Hat tip: Patrick Archbold at Creative Minority Report)

Matthew Archbold of Creative Minority Report is blogging this week at Faith & Family, and his offering today is a must-read - "What I Learned in the Waiting Room":

Everything I needed to know about love I learned in a hospital waiting room...

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... my mind often goes back to that day when that waiting room was illuminated with grace. Everything in this suffering world made a triumphant sort of sense. It was the reality of the Cross in our lives, the triumph of love over pain. Over death.

That, I think, is why the broken form of our Savior in the arms of his Mother is one which explains the world to me better than any other image. It reminds me that suffering and love are inextricably tied; that we are called to love and the cost of love is suffering. Ironically, the only remedy to that pain consuming us is … yes … to make the decision to love even more yet again.

[Read the whole thing]

(emphasis added)