PRAYER AS FELLOWSHIP

'Prayer is a divinely ordained means of living in fellowship with God and each other.' 
J Todd Billings, Rejoicing in Lament, p.123. 

CHOOSING A CHURCH

'...a top recommended question from me for "church shoppers" might be this: who would you like to bury you?'

J Todd Billings, Rejoicing in Lament, p.99. 

NOT ANSWERING THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

'...in my view the biblical "answer" to the speculative problem of evil is this (drum roll, please): we don't have an answer. It's not that the Bible hasn't addressed the question so that we as humans are left with a shoulder-shrugging: "I don't know." The Bible has addressed the question, and God's response - as in  the book of Job - is that humans don't have an answer to the problem of evil, and we shouldn't claim to have one. It should remain an open question, one that we continue to ask in prayer and in our lives in response to the world's suffering.' 

J Todd Billings, Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestlng with Incurable Cancer & Life in Christ, p.21.