I’ve slipped a bit on my plan to have one of these essays on Dust in the Light each week — partly because my time has had to be spent elsewhere, and partly because they take longer to write than a typical post.

This weekend, I took up the ideas of sacredness and meaning in life, as well as the relevance of suffering, in Christian belief:

Our lives can be sacred and meaningful while we are not suffering, and by the same rule, when we make our lives sacred and meaningful, we are also less apt to see suffering as suffering when it comes. In such a life, the sacrifice is not so much deprivation in material terms (although that can be a useful catalyst) as it is relinquishment in spiritual terms: “I give this work (that is good, just, and done with love) and my experience of it over to God, whatever its material effects on me.”