Brennan Manning on why it’s so hard to join the celebration of redemption: “But most of us stand outside the banquet door, listening to the merriment and festivity inside, half hoping that there really is a banquet in there and that it’s the nature of the world to be a celebration. We’d like to go in and celebrate, but wow! What if it’s wrong? What if there is no banquet in there? What if it’s a trick? Why don’t a lot of us go in now? Because we know that inside it’s not a perfect banquet for the simple fact that we are still living between the cross and the resurrection. Christianity doesn’t deny the reality of suffering and evil. Remember after Jesus came down the mount of Transfiguration, He told His disciples that He was going up to Jerusalem—that He would be executed and that He would triumph over death. Jesus was not the least bit confident that He would be spared suffering. He knew that suffering was necessary. What He was confident of was vindication. Our hope, our acceptance of the invitation to the banquet, is not based on the idea that we are going to be free of pain and suffering. Rather, it is based on the conviction that we will triumph over suffering” (Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out [Colorado Springs, Multnomah, 2005], 169–70, Kindle).
