There’s quite the discussion going on in my Sunny Days and Stormy Praise post.

I just read a chapter in Velvet Elvis that seems to go along with many of the comments.

Here’s one to go along with Nicole’s thoughts:

“Central to reclaiming creation and being a resurrection community is the affirmation that when God made the world, God said it was “good”.

And it still is.

Food and music and art and friends and stories and rivers and lakes and oceans and laughter and… did I mention food? God has given us life, and God’s desire is that we live it. It is the job of the church to lead the world in affirming and, more important, enjoying the goodness of creation…” 170-171

In the same chapter, Rob Bell writes about suffering.

“Not only is the way narrow, but it involves suffering. To truly engage with how the world is, our hearts are going to be broken again and again. Just this past week, I met a woman who is terrified her husband is going to beat her, and another woman who has a degenerative muscle disease that is causing her face to freeze up, and I can think of at least five couples who are splitting up, and… you get the picture. It is your world too. And so we are learning how to suffer well. Not to avoid it but to feel the full force of it…. Suffering is a place where cliches don’t work and words fail.” 169-170