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Bonus Web Review: Finding Purpose Beyond Our Pain Print Email
Written by Staff   
Wednesday, 21 October 2009 12:00 AM America/New_York
Written to address the problem of suffering, Finding Purpose Beyond Our Pain gives advice for facing pain directly. The authors, psychiatrists Meir and Henderson, classify types of suffering into seven categories—injustice, discipline, failure, death, rejection, loneliness and loss—and examine how each can bring their "gifts" into a person’s life.
While the optimistic premise, that there is purpose in pain, may surprise some readers, the pair takes a gracious look at the trials of life and offers grounded, sensitive advice on overcoming them. Using Scripture, stories of human experience and the promise of heaven, the authors set out to take the reader from a tendency to blame God or drift into depression to accepting the challenges of the purification process of suffering.

Meir and Henderson’s care and research make the book an invaluable tool, not only for leaders and counselors ministering to those in pain, but also for laypersons. The book is also easily referenced for readers looking for a specific topic.
DeWayne Hamby

Finding Purpose Beyond Our Pain
Paul Meir and David L. Henderson
Thomas Nelson
hardcover, $22.99, 304 pages
978-0-785-22922-3