“For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.”
2 Corinthians 1:5 (NIV)
The New Testament makes it very clear how the Christian life works. Whatever we receive from God, we are to share with others. That also goes for the comfort He gives us. Once we experience God’s comfort during a difficult time, we are meant to share it with someone else.
Every person has a unique gift and calling, which is placed in them at birth. We are not expected to be like someone else, but to discover who we are meant to be. I cannot expect to be like my two older brothers, a Physics professor and an Aerospace engineer, since science was not my greatest interest, as it was for them.
I was a day dreamer, and an artistic creative kind of child. I used to spend hours making little books and drawing pictures on each page, adding words to tell a story and then stapling it together so that someone could turn the pages and read it through.
I never imagined that sixty five years later, I’d be writing daily meditations, but God knew. He patiently waits for years until we discover the gift He wants to use in us. It wasn’t until after becoming a widow, that I discovered my love for writing.
During that time, God comforted me in many ways, through my faith and I started to write about it. In time, a tragic event can lead us to discover a new purpose. As someone once said, “The eye must shed tears in order to find its focus.”
The comfort we find in hardship, through our faith, leads us to comfort others through some gift that God uses in us. We are all on a mission of finding our gift in every stage of life. There is a gift of offering friendship to a person during a critical time. There is a gift of teaching and sharing wisdom that stays with a person for a lifetime. Some have a gift of discernment that gives insight into the sadness of others. There are those who have musical gifts, a talent to create, sing or play an instrument, which touches many hearts. All gifts were placed in us at birth, even the gifts that lied dormant for years.
Those little books that I stapled together as a child, were like an early hint of what God wanted me to do later. The love of writing must have lied dormant until I became a widow in 2019. Now I plan to take 50 of my favorite meditations and publish them in a book in 2027.
We’re all here to share the comfort and compassion that we ourselves received from God. I once shared it with a resident at the Nursing home who had a history of substance abuse. Her two adult daughters have alienated her, as a result of her past addiction. Her only desire now is to hear or speak to her daughters again, before she dies. I’m calling her Jan for privacy reasons.
After Jan made many attempts to reach out and call her daughters, they kept declining her calls. She shared with me that when she was young, she used to pray and believe in God, long before her addiction to heroin destroyed her life. She now thinks God has rejected her, just as her family has.
I told her God wants her back, and He is not finished with her yet. I tried to encourage her to pray simple prayers like, “Jesus help me.” Then I told her I would pray that her daughters have a change of heart and one day reach out to her.
That was three years ago, and Jan has recently been placed on hospice, since she is declining physically and mentally, but God has not forgotten Jan. A few weeks ago, her two daughters flew in from Florida together, to visit her for the first time in many years. They came with gifts of blankets, clothing and snacks, while they spent a couple days visiting her in the Nursing home.
Jan was thrilled to finally introduce me to them, and I know that God answered her prayer. I can imagine God looking at Jan with His heart full of mercy, then touching her daughters’ hearts, by bringing them back into her life. It was the greatest gift of comfort that she needed most, especially now.
God is patient and no matter how long it takes, He answers prayer and softens hard hearts as He did with Jan’s daughters. He longs to comfort us, and once we receive His comfort, He hopes we will help someone else receive the same comfort.
Lord, help us to comfort others as you have comforted us, and use the gifts that are unused within us, to encourage others. Amen
