| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 5 |
Page 8 |
In one of St. Paul’s epistles we are taught that God’s comfort also is given to us in trust. We do not receive it for ourselves only, but that we may give it out again to others. To the Corinthians the apostle wrote in an outburst of joyous praise: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort them that are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” Thus the intention of our heavenly Father, when He finds us in sorrow and ministers comfort to us, is not merely to get us through the trial, to strengthen us to endure for ourselves the pain or loss, but also to prepare us for being comforters of others.
When we have been helped to say, “Thy will be done,” in some great trial, and have been enabled to go on rejoicing in tribulation, we have a secret which we must tell others. We must go to those whom we find in grief or trial, and sitting down beside them, let them know what God did for us when we were in like experience, giving them the words of God which have helped us.
When we pray for comfort in sorrow it should be with this motive that we may get a new blessing to take to others. To ask to be comforted merely that we may be able to endure our own pain or grief is to pray selfishly. But when we pray that God would teach us the lessons of comfort that we may teach them again to others that He would help us to overcome that we may help others to be victorious, our prayer pleases Him and will be answered.
Thus our lesson gathers itself all into this: We are “stewards of the mysteries of God. … It is required in stewards that a man be found faithful.” When God sends us pain or sorrow we are to be faithful. We are to accept our trust with love and to think of it as something of God’s committed to us. However heavy the burden, it is a gift from God and has a blessing in it for us. We must never forget that in our hardest trial we have something of God’s in our hands and must treat it reverently and get from it whatever good God has sent to us in it. Then we must think of it also as something which is not for ourselves alone, but which we are to share with others.
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