Plate Spinners, Round 18

It's time for another featured book review

Oct 14, 2022

I really want to tell you all about this book. As the book people say: it broke my highlighter. It sets out to answer the question, “What if the church treated suffering like a story to tell rather than a secret to keep until it passes?”

The title is obviously not super encouraging (a twist on the phrase “this too shall pass”), but I promise you the content of the book is such a hopeful message.

“Our present discomfort has to be united with God’s past faithfulness to create future hope, but we struggle to allow our current distress to be touched by God’s faithfulness shown to us in Christ.”

It’s written from the perspective of an author who is battling a chronic illness, but there’s so much here for all of us. We all face pain and suffering that we think is unique to us. We think we’re supposed to be self-sufficient and never show weakness, and that we aren’t able to find God in the midst of the suffering. The church in general doesn’t allow space for us to lament and share in our suffering, and the response is so often either shame or platitudes that don’t seem to help anyone.

“Others might not be comfortable with our most honest, desperate cries, but the psalms make it exceedingly clear God is.”

“God continuously invites us to know his presence in our pain, but we often miss his invitation because we are too busy dismissing his messengers.”

KJ turns it entirely upside down and instead offers grace and hope in the face of suffering.

I think there is incredible connection for us to find when we are able to share in our suffering. When we allow those around us to be heard and seen, and in witnessing their struggle, we can be the incarnation of God’s love.

“In the presence of other Christians, people in whom Christ dwells, with the seed of sorrow not swallowed but revealed and planted in the dirt of our inability to save ourselves, we digest a better story. In kind faces, long conversations, and tears shed but not shamed, we absorb the nourishment our bodies most need to become the remade, redeemed, resplendent selves Christ bought.”

Whether you’re trying to find your own way through suffering, or you’re just trying to know how to best serve others who are doing the same, I can’t recommend this book enough.

“The gospel establishes a pattern of incarnation as the right response to suffering. Instead of dropping a word of truth, we should be compelled by the gospel to stand in each other’s suffering in bodies displaying God’s truth, in our willingness to be honest about darkness, death, and the defeat we feel.”

Here’s an amazon link.

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💫 All Consuming

ICYMI, the Great British Bake Off hosted…..Mexican week this week. To say that it was offensive would be an understatement. I’ll let someone more qualified than myself discuss the multitude of offensive jokes and stereotypes paraded through this episode, and I’ll just take a quick moment to address the food:

They made tacos ** quick reminder, this is a BAKING show ** and they repeatedly referred to the tortilla as the “taco” (Paul Hollywood repeatedly said “the taco is very thick” when he was clearly talking about the tortilla)
They made a layered Tres Leches. Not sure if y’all have ever had tres leches, but on the scale of stackable building blocks to soggy cakes, it is very far on the soggy cake side. This of course makes for a delicious dessert. It does not, however, make for a great layered dessert object.
I will say two positive things now:
- 1. Queen Maxy got star baker
- 2. REBS WENT HOME!!!
Here’s to hoping next week is better!

🐦 Tweets

Hayden Clarkin @the_transit_guy

Jerry’s apartment hallway can’t exist. My entire childhood was a lie.

JavaSok @javasok

♍︎ 🎃 @luvinflix

me after making a recipe I found on the internet

Paul @bingowings14

McDonald’s staff harvesting apple pie filling

Tony Hightower may have @ThatTonyH

I know everyone thinks Hemingway has the ultimate Six Word Story, but may I present (Via mltshp.com/p/1O1CE )

Samantha Ruddy @samlymatters

Cilantro is delicious and the soap people are just addicted to drama

Mike @michaelcollado

Watching TikToks during commercial breaks to keep my brain constantly distracted from forming a single thought

Wild Geerters @steinkobbe

I hate Alex Jones too but this will have a chilling effect on free speech. After the next school shooting some people might think twice before they start harassing the victims and accuse them of being actors in order to sell brain pills

leila @leilabracken

me someday when im on #survivor

⏰ Tik Tok