The Whole Earth Groans - Romans 8:19-22

When God gives up the world to futility, he did not do so vindictively but redemptively.  He allows us to live on our own, in our own futility.  This is severe mercy.

God cannot trust us to the full knowledge of His ways.
-Chuck Jacob

Nicholas Wolterstorff

"If sympathy for the world's wounds is not enlarged by our anguish, 
if love for those around us is not expanded, 
if gratitude for what is good does not flame up, 
if insight is not deepened, 
if commitment to what is important is not strengthened, 
if aching for a new day is not intensified,
if hope is weakened and faith diminished,
if from the experience of death comes nothing good, then death has won. Then death, be proud.
So I shall struggle to live the reality of Christ's rising and death's dying."
-Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, p. 92-93

David Wells on Prayer

Prayer is rebellion against the world in its fallenness, the absolute and undying refusal, to accept as normal what is so perversely broken.
-David Wells

St. Augustine

How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose and was now glad to reject! You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood, you who outshine all light yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts, you who surpass all honor though not in the eyes of men who see all honor in themselves. At last my mind was free from the gnawing anxieties of ambition and gain, from wallowing in filth and scratching the itching sore of lust. I began to talk to you freely, O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation.

Psalm 23

The Lord is my constant companion.
There is no need that He cannot fulfill.
Whether His course for me points
to the mountaintops of glorious joy
or to the valleys of human suffering,
He is by my side.
He is ever present with me.
He is close beside me
when I read the dark streets of danger,
and even when I flirt with death itself,
He will not leave me.
When the pain is severe,
He is near to comfort.
When the burden is heavy
He is there to lean upon.
When depression darkens my soul,
He touches me with eternal joy.
When I feel empty and alone,
He fills the aching vacuum with His power.
My security is in His promise
to be near me always
an in the knowledge
that He will never let me go.

From Psalms/Now by Leslie F. Brandt

Piper

Helping you embrace the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

A Praying Life, Paul E. Miller

p.10
The best our world has to offer is to teach you how to talk to yourself. Change what you tell yourself, and your feelings about what happened will change. Change your self-talk, and how you feel about yourself will change. Talk yourself out of getting upset about what you can't change. Do something constructive about what you can change. Those are the world's best efforts. It's a familiar but abnormal way to live.
- David Powlison

p. 20
Prayer is simply the medium through which we experience and connect to God.

p. 22
If God is sovereign, then he is in control of all the details of my life. If he is loving, then he is going to be shaping the details of my life for my good. If he is all-wise, then he's not going to do everything I want because I don't know what I need. If he is patient, then he is going to take time to do all this. When we put all these things together - God's sovereignty, love, wisdom, and patience - we have a divine story.

Unanswered prayers create some of the tensions in the story God is weaving in our lives.

If God is composing a story with our lives, then our lives are no longer static. We aren't paralyzed by life; we can hope.

We dull our souls with the narcotic of activity. The quest for a contemplative life can actually be self-absorbed, focused on my quiet and me. If we love people and have the power to help, then we are going to be busy. Learning to pray doesn't offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart. In the midst of the outer busyness we can develop an inner quiet.

p. 24
Love changes us. The second person of the Trinity, Jesus of Nazareth, now has a scarred body. The Trinity is different because of love.