That loss, that suffering, that pain, I'll say it like this.

It's coming either way.

The question is not, can you avoid suffering by avoiding Jesus?

The question is, can your suffering be transformed by embracing Jesus?

I'm my name's Father Mike Schmitz and this is the Center Presents.

Apologize for the tree.

It is beginning to look a lot at Christmas, but it's not yet Christmas.

We are filming the upcoming Advent series called Waiting Well.

And so I have a Christmas tree in my living room because limited space.

Someone recently reached out and they're reading about the lives of saints.

And they said reading about the lives of saints is both inspiring and really, really

intimidating. Inspiring because, obviously,

here's God who does incredible things with normal human beings. But intimidating in the sense

they said this. They said, it seems like all of these saints have this same story in the sense

that they start following the Lord and they have horrible things happen to them.

Physical suffering, mental anguish, big grief in the hearts.

They lose everything.

They have to go places they never would want to go.

Yeah, I kind of want to be a saint. God wants me to be a saint, but I don't know if I want to sign up for that.

You know, it's funny, we have two narratives.

One narrative is you follow Jesus and blue skies. I mean, it's rainbows,

it is butterflies, and it's sunshine. But the other alternative is you follow Jesus and it is

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