[why]

Well, this beatdowndragoutcannotbreathenovoice cold might be terrible for my body, but it is good for my soul. My Reading List Soul, that is.

There are some sections of Jayber Crow I cannot help but read over and over, both for their simple prosal beauty and they way they say something that is so difficult to explain.

With another war stealing boys from the town of Port William to die in far away places, grief descends on the town again. This time, it is angry. The foolishness of war is so blatant, so severe.

For a while again I couldn't pray. I didn't dare to. In the most secret place of my soul I wanted to beg the Lord to reveal Himself in power. I wanted to tell Him that it was time for His coming. If there was anything at all to what He had promised, why didn't He come in glory with angels and lay His hands on the hurt children and awaken the dead soldiers and restore the burned villages and the blasted and poisoned land? ...

But thinking such things was as dangerous as praying them. I knew who had thought such thoughts before: 'Let Christ the King of Israel descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe.' Where in my own arrogance was I going to hide? ...

Christ did not descend from the cross except into the grave. And why not otherwise? Wouldn't it have put fine comical expressions on the faces of the scribes and chief priests and the soldiers if at that moment He had come down in power and glory? Why didn't He do it? Why hasn't He done it any one of a thousand good times between then and now?

I knew the answer. I knew it a long time before I could admit it, for all the suffering of the world is in it. He didn't, He hasn't, because from the moment He did, he would be the absolute tyrant of the world and we would be His slaves. Even those who hated Him and hated one another and hated their own souls would have to believe in Him then. From that moment the possibility that we might be bound to Him and He to us and us to one another by love forever would be ended.

And so, I thought, He must forbear to reveal His power and glory by presenting Himself as Himself, and must be present only in the ordinary miracle of the existence of His creatures. Those who wish to see Him must see Him in the poor, the hungry, the hurt, the wordless creatures, the groaning and travailing beautiful world [295].

Sometimes there just aren't words to sum something up, you just have to let it speak for itself.

And it's time for more tea.