A month ago Frederick Buechner died at age ninety-six. During that windfall of years, in which he served as a high-school chaplain, was ordained a Presbyterian minister, raised a family, and worked his unusually enchanted way with words, Buechner wrote a book that I read again each year.

The most common challenge to Christian faith is the presence of pain, evil, and suffering in the world. We ask, if there is a God, why are these things allowed? Some suffering is the result of our own folly but there is also the suffering that seems to be woven into the fabric of life in ways we

“You are dust and to dust you shall return.”