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Compassion and Comfort

             Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (II Corinthians 1:3-4)

“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2-3)

          Often, when things are going other than as we’d like, we want God to show us compassion and to comfort us. It’s natural, normal, and appropriate for us to seek those things from Him. We should seek those blessings from Him.  Years ago, as I whined on about some crisis my life, asking God what I had done to deserve it, He didn’t tell me specifically, but He told me that what I face is sometimes for the benefit of someone else. When someone else faced a difficulty, I could show them compassion based in knowledge and give them compassion born of wisdom.

          Typically,  when someone or some group is suffering, someone will ask,  “Why is God doing this?” as if there is one simple answer; a one-to-one correspondence between cause and effect. That seems a very expensive way for God to work. Yes, He is certainly powerful enough to cause only one effect per cause, but it’s not what we see. One hurricane can affect millions of people, and not all in the same way. Two women can lose children to a drunk driver, and one gets busy campaigning against drunk driving, while another comforts someone who loses a child to cancer.

          We see this in Scripture. Abraham was promised a blessing, not so he could enjoy life, but so that he could bring a blessing to others. That blessing wasn’t something he could accomplish. He tried and failed. It might seem cruel to call hardship a blessing, but it can be one. And just as God’s plan for Abraham was that all people of the world would be blessed through him, it’s possible that whatever God puts you through may be meant for the benefit of the whole world. I suspect God makes sure of that for more than just Abraham.

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