Sharing in suffering

Other than the Bible, this is by far the most concise, convincing explanation of why God does not always answer Christians' prayers for healing:

It seems to me that God has called us--I speak of Christian believers--into the world and not out of it. This may be one reason he does not heal us all and keep us healthy and give us all peaceful and pain-free deaths at the end. We are called into, sent, not so that we could demonstrate God's glory by floating above the "worldlings" in a cloud of blessedness and ease, but so that we can walk with the suffering as sufferers with . . . even as we "hold out the word of life."

Amen.