Life Will Be Filled With Losses—John 16:33

There is an umbrella-word that we use to cover the countless variety of situations that have this character, namely suffering. Suffering… may conveniently be defined as getting what you do not want while wanting what you do not get. This definition covers all forms of loss, hurt, pain, grief, and weakness–all experiences of rejection, injustice, disappointment, discouragement, frustration, and being the butt of others’ hatred, ridicule, cruelty, callousness, anger, and ill-treatment—plus all exposure to foul, sickening, and nightmarish things that make you want to scream, run, or even die…. Ease is for heaven, not earth. Life on earth is fundamentally out of shape and out of order by reason of sin…. So strains, pains, disappointments, traumas, and frustrations of all sorts await us in the future, just as they have overtaken us already in the past.

J.I. Packer, Rediscovering Holiness, p. 249, 254, emphasis added. Quoted in God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting, by Robert Kellemen, p. 3.