suffering Archives | All The More: Collective Blog

September 17, 2021 Kathryn Pesyna 4 min read

Our world is on fire. I mean this mostly figuratively, but I live in Northern California, and we currently have several wildfires ravaging our terrain. Their frequency and intensity are not like we’ve seen in this region before. In Haiti, a poor nation still reeling from the assassination of its president, a devastating earthquake struck in the same area that is still recovering from a paralyzing earthquake that happened eleven years ago. Hurricane Ida made landfall 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans. It ripped its way through the region again and this time made its way all the way northeast, causing record flooding in New York and New Jersey. As we come upon the twentieth anniversary of September 11th, there is renewed unrest in Afghanistan and a resulting humanitarian crisis in the Middle East. Globally, there is the raging Delta variant overfilling our hospitals and […]

Praising Through The Suffering

July 30, 2021 Sina Steele 5 min read

I sat down at the front of the chapel, alone, except for the worship team who was warming up. It was my turn to deliver a devotion to the college, yet I had nothing. After a few weeks of winter sickness hitting our home hard, I had nothing left. For devotions—or anything else, really. Like most winters, our family was all under the weather. Living in a college community doesn’t help with sickness, either. This time, however, my husband, already immuno-compromised, suffered a bout of debilitating migraines as well. I sat at the front of the chapel, almost feeling sorry for myself. My voice still sounded hoarse, my husband’s head was still groggy, and I just felt drained. The last thing I wanted to do was to compose myself to give an encouraging devotional message to the college I work at. Sitting there, desperately trying to pray for some quick […]