Comfort

I enjoy reading the devotions by David Jeremiah and I wanted to share this one with you.  Our experiences in life give us the opportunity to help others.

Turning Point with David Jeremiah

Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.
Romans 12:15

When Mitch Albom heard that his favorite college professor was dying of Lou Gehrig's disease, he visited him for the first time in  over 20 years. He asked Morrie, the professor, why he bothered to follow the news each day since he was not going to be around to see how things turn out: "It's hard to explain, Mitch," Morrie said. "Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer than I ever did before.... I feel their anguish as if it were my own."*

One of the reasons God lets us suffer in life is so we can understand the suffering of others and be able to comfort them--to do unto them what we would want others to do unto us. Paul lays out the progression of comfort in suffering by saying that God comforts us when we are hurting so we can comfort others with the same comfort by which we were comforted (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). When we suffer, we should receive the comfort of God and remember it so we can replicate that comfort for another.

We don't have to pray for suffering--it will find us easily enough. But we should pray for a spiritually-empathetic heart to feel the anguish of others and be prepared to comfort them as we ourselves would want to be comforted.

*Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lessons (Broadway, 2002), p. 50.

Sandra Vickery

Administrative Assistant