Peter of The Age to Come comments on the Prayer of Jabez and on our false notions of who and what God is. In pointing to this post the Young Fogey states, —God is not a vending machine.— Exactly right, God is not a slot machine dispensing happiness because we deserve it or ask for it.

I’ve reflected on this line of thinking from the perspective of the disaffected person seeking Christ, the person disaffected by our definition of them.

You know who ‘they’ are, the homosexual, the liberal, the conservative, the widow, the orphan, the aged, the poor, the Arab, the ‘free choice’ supporter, the person seeking cures through embryonic stem cell research.

It is our obligation as Christians to witness to these people, to acknowledge their pain and suffering, to lighten their load by our humanity and support, and in the end to show them that the world’s concept of an entitlement to happiness is a straw man.

We need to get away from hellfire condemnation (you have no right to suffer because your suffering is pure selfishness) and move to truthful charity.

This is not calling an evil good – we cannot veer from, or change God’s message. It is rather an act of catechetical guidance, helping them along the path to regeneration and from there on the road to Theosis. We need to assist them, and the world, in understanding that suffering is an on-going act of righteousness. Righteous suffering being suffering with purpose, and that purpose having true affect.