As I look back on my first real book, I shudder that I had the audacity to tackle one of the most daunting theological questions, the problem of pain, in my late twenties. Yet suffering was one of the impediments to my faith, and it poses questions that confront all of us at some point.  This was a book I could not not write.  Thirteen years after its initial publication, I went back and revised it in view of all I had learned since.

The Gift of Pain tells the story of my coauthor Dr. Paul Brand, a renowned British surgeon who discovered that painlessness is the root cause of the damage leprosy patients incur.  He led the most fascinating life of anyone I’ve ever interviewed. Pain is not something that most of us would count as a blessing. However, Dr. Paul Brand’s work with leprosy patients in India and the United States convinced him that pain truly is one of God’s great gifts to us.

Where is God when it hurts? That question formed the title of my first real book, more than 30 years ago. In 2012 I was asked to speak on this topic in three places of great suffering: in Japan, for the one-year anniversary of the tsunami that killed 20,000; in Sarajevo, which endured the longest siege in modern warfare; and in Newtown, Connecticut, a town in sorrow after a gunman killed 20 school children at Sandy Hook.

The idea for the book came to me in late November 2008 as the plane I was traveling in took off from the Mumbai, India, airport.  I had been scheduled to speak on a book tour downtown the very night terrorists attacked the Taj Mahal Hotel and ten different sites, killing 165 people.  The city went under lockdown and we had to cancel the scheduled event.  Instead I spoke at an impromptu service at a small church in the suburbs in an atmosphere clouded with fear and grief. 

Grace Notes collects 366 daily readings from my books and articles, and travel reports.  Each entry takes only a few minutes to read.  Together, the readings  communicate my understanding of God, the world, and faith. I hope they especially speak to the disillusioned, doubters, sufferers, and out-of-the-mold believers.