Some (comfort) Food for Thought.

Have you ever had a verse or truth come up in a conversation so many times that you just can't ignore it?  You wonder why God might have placed this in your path so many times in a concentrated effort to get your attention.  While helping someone plan their own celebration of life, their life verse was a reoccurring theme that kept coming up in conversation over the last few weeks.  It is a powerful message to anyone who will hear it. 
 
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,  who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.  For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.  But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer;  and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are partners in our sufferings, so also you are in our comfort.
2 Corinthians 2:3-7
 
God offers us comfort so that we  can offer comfort to others.  God will often use areas of pain or suffering in a person’s life as a bridge for the gospel.  When people are in hardship they will often be more open to the leading of the Lord. Look at the Beatitudes in Matthew 5.    How has God comforted you?  Has He comforted you as you mourn a loss?  Through illness or pain?  In a storm or trail?  How did He comfort you?  
Recognize that when you receive comfort from God that you are now uniquely equipped to offer that same comfort to others.  You understand a specific hurt or hardship that will help others through a similar difficulty.  It is time to redeem the trails, hurts and grief of the past and to offer out the hope and comfort of Jesus to others.