Compass Podcast: Finding the spirituality in the day-to-day · United Methodist Communications

Wrestling with suffering and grace

·42 min·2 clips

Jabe says he could not see “a god that is good” when his baby died after a failed attempt to get clean.

Ryan Dunn frames the conversation as a search for spirituality in ordinary life, even when that life has been marked by rupture. Reverend Jabe Largen brings a story shaped by addiction, tragedy, transformation, and renewed hope. He speaks from experience of growing up amid the opioid crisis in Appalachia. The pain is not treated as something neatly resolved. Instead, grace is shown as emerging not in spite of pain and vulnerability, but often through them. Largen says it took a while after going to church to even start to understand grace. He also names theodicy, the question of how evil can exist if God is good, and says he was writing about it in seminary. A sermon about grief after the death of a son becomes an important companion for him, especially the preacher's grief after untimely death. Largen recognizes that kind of preaching because he knows what untimely death feels like from the inside. He reflects on a church visitor who brought food into the home and spoke as if God had willed the tragedy. The moment becomes a sharp example of the tension around suffering, faith, and consolation. Dunn keeps pressing gently, asking what Largen would say to someone walking through similar pain today. Largen answers with a pastor's patience rather than a slogan. He says he was desperate enough to keep showing up and keep praying, and that change and transformation could happen. He also speaks about honesty, vulnerability, and the temptation for people in ministry to hide behind competence. His counsel is not to spill everything on day one, but to share a little at a time within trusted relationships. The conversation settles on boldness, humility, and the possibility of moving forward without pretending pain is simple.

As heard by us

A pastoral conversation that treats grief, grace, and theodicy as lived realities.

Reverend Jabe Largen sits with Ryan Dunn for a conversation that stays with hard questions instead of dodging them. It moves from his upbringing amid the opioid crisis in Appalachia to the slow work of finding grace after loss, with theodicy named plainly throughout.

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Why you'd press play

If you're carrying grief and still hoping grace can hold, press play.

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