Sam and Laura Job have the perfect life. They have a wonderful marriage. Beautiful children. Two great careers. They have a beautiful house in the suburbs. The Jobs are bestowed with all the blessings modern life has to offer. Their life was idyllic until a moment of tragedy changed everything for them, forever. As their family tries to rebuild after this life-altering calamity they struggle to define their relationships with themselves, their relationships with each other and their relationship with God. The Suffering of Innocents looks at the age old question posed in the Old Testament's Book of Job, ""Why do innocents suffer?

D. A. Carson stated that if people live long enough, almost everyone will experience unexplained and unexpected suffering in their lifetime. Many philosophers and theologians throughout history have sought to find reasons for and solutions to the problem of suffering. The church fathers before A.D. 325 experienced severe persecutions in the early years of Christianity and instructed the persecuted church using various philosophical perspectives like theology, anthropology, cosmology, teleology, and eschatology to help explain the educational purpose of suffering. This study explores biblical teachings on suffering; analyzes the hidden realities surrounding human sufferings using the five philosophical perspectives; demonstrates that all ten church fathers based their ideas about suffering on Scripture and agreed that suffering can be used as an educational instrument by God; compares the biblical understandings and the historical instructions on suffering in three teaching and learning domains in order to develop a pedagogy of suffering; then synthesizes all the findings into a complete pedagogy of suffering. It is the hope of the author of this study that believers can learn to navigate suffering from a teleological perspective when this pedagogy is applied as suggested.

In Christian churches, the “Why Lord?” and “How long Lord?” prayers of the Jewish lament tradition have fallen silent. This is astonishing given that Jesus’ fidelity to the cause of God culminates in his lament cry on Calvary, which was “heard” by God (Heb 5:7), who did not hide his face (Ps 22:24) but responded by raising him up in glory. In Christ’s paschal mystery, grief (lament) and joy (praise) are inextricably intertwined. So why is lament not incorporated into praise in church usage? How can we not lament as we strive to embody Christ in an unredeemed world? The book examines reasons for the neglect of lament in the New Testament and theological tradition. The pivotal section of the work situates Jesus in the tradition of the suffering righteous in which Psalm 22 stands and it proposes a theological (not juridical) interpretation of Jesus’ cry, which refutes the God-abandonment thesis: Jesus’ cry reveals his abandonment to God, not his abandonment by God! Because God was “for” and “with” Jesus, we know that God is “for” and “with” us in our own cries, which are joined to Jesus’ cry, and we are redeemed. Redemption, then, consists in human and divine suffering coming together to transform grief and evil into joy and newness of life.

This "compulsively readable memoir...brings to light an issue that has been too long ignored...An immensely important book" (Emily Oster, New York Times bestselling author of Expecting Better and Cribsheet). A story of a mother’s fierce love for her exceptional child and her courageous journey to break the silence about a hidden risk to pregnant women: "both a beautiful family story and an urgent call to action… [A] moving, potentially life-altering book" (Robert Kolker, author of #1 New York Times bestseller Hidden Valley Road). After a seemingly uneventful pregnancy, Megan Nix’s second daughter, Anna, was born very small and profoundly deaf. Megan and her husband, Luke, learned that Anna could have lifelong delays due to an infection from a virus they had never heard of: cytomegalovirus, or CMV, which Megan had unwittingly contracted from her toddler during pregnancy. Megan was electrified by this knowledge. She had been warned, while pregnant, about the risks of saunas, sushi, and unpasteurized cheese, a lack of folic acid, and an excess of kitty litter. She knew to fear a slew of genetic syndromes she could do little to prevent. But she had not been told that CMV is contagious in the saliva of one out of three toddlers, spread through a kiss, a shared cup, a bite of unfinished toast. She had not been told that the stakes were high, that congenital CMV causes more birth defects and childhood disabilities—including blindness, deafness, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and autism—than any infectious disease. Or that some of these disabilities are evident at birth, but others appear suddenly at age two or three and are never traced back to congenital CMV. Remedies for Sorrow unfolds across the dramatic landscape of Sitka, Alaska, where Luke makes his living as a salmon fisherman. There, Megan struggles to meet Anna’s needs and dives deeper into the mystery of why no one—not her OBGYN, not her toddler’s pediatrician—had mentioned CMV, despite the staggering cost of this silence to families and children like Anna. From this rugged and beautiful place comes a memoir about the boundless capacity of mothers, the extraordinary child that is Anna, and the lifesaving power of truth.