What are we to make of the matter of suffering? Where can we place our pain? The need to understand our sorrow is as unavoidable as the experience of sorrow itself. Yet explaining the presence of suffering has remained every era's most vexing spiritual challenge.
Those who are hurting, anxious, or lonely need to process their pain, so they file into the pews, turn their attention toward the pulpit, and wait for God to do some explaining. Some are spiritually exhausted and stagger like boxers in the twelfth round of a badly mismatched fight. Others no longer look for answers, at least not from the pews. Sanctuary floors everywhere are covered with the towels of those who have given up the fight...if giving up the fight is possible. But where will we find our hope if not in the realm of faith?
In Home Before Sunset, Joseph Crowther honors the reader by refusing to provide pat answers for complex questions. Instead, he invites us along as he searches his faith for a deeper understanding of suffering. Joe's pilgrimage takes us to such places as Jerusalem and Tanzania, and reexamines his experiences of divorce, family crises, job loss, and diagnosis with a neurodegenerative illness.
Crowther creates pieces of memoir, scholarly nonfiction, inspiration, and humor, and arranges them into a beautiful mosaic of hope. What emerges is an image of God whose grace is always larger than our pain and whose mercy overcomes our sorrow.