Your experience can help someone else, someone else's experience can help you and this swapping of information can help one another through life's most horrible moments. You are not alone. This sharing is comfort.

So we’re in need of some comfort, but sometimes our pursuit of comfort can look like a dog chasing its own tail.  There’s a lot running around in circles, barking and snarling and once you catch it, a lot of yelping.  That whole thing can leave you wondering what you were really looking for in the first place.

Maybe we are chasing our own tails because we have always done it that way and we don’t know any better.    Maybe that’s what our parents did, their parents before them, and so on and so on.  We simply don’t know any better.  Doing something because that’s what we’ve always done is crazy.  In fact, insanity is doing something the same way over and over again expecting different results.

Maybe we are chasing our own tails to make us think we are actually doing something.  If you run enough, you surely feel like you’ve done a lot.  After all, there is nothing like a good lather of sweat to make a soul feel like they’ve done something big, important and impressive.  But in reality all you’ve done is run around in a circle, chasing your own tail, you’ve moved real fast, but you haven’t gotten anywhere.

Chasing false comfort is like chasing your own tail and if you have ever caught it, then you know it doesn’t feel much like comfort.  In part 1 of “The Pursuit of Comfort” I said that the “real” comfort comes from God because God is the God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3).  The ways that God chooses to dispense His comfort are endless, but let’s look at one of the ways mentioned in 2 Corinthians 1.

One of the ways that God chooses to dispense his comfort is through the people He has placed around us; our own families, friends and even acquaintances.  In verse 6 it says; “If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer” (emphasis mine).   There’s a lot a “weeing” in there?  And maybe it is because the Apostle Paul is saying that we are to encourage one another through times of suffering.  The word “through” is the operative word.  Why?  Because each one of us, through our own life’s sufferings, have walked through the valley.

We all have started our journey on the side of life before loss.  In a flash, that all changed, the crisis came, our loved one died, and we were thrown through the door that led to the valley of pain, suffering, death and sorrow.  It was a long hard journey, but we made it through and have come to the other side to a new place of hope, healing and life.   That life experience has made your friend a valuable resource for you and you for your friend.

Your experience can help someone else, someone else’s experience can help you and this swapping of information can help one another through life’s most horrible moments.  You are not alone.  This sharing is comfort.

We are created to be in relationship with one another.  We are called to share our lives with others.  The good, the bad and the ugly are all part of our life condition and all of it is meant to be shared.  And again, this mutual sharing is comfort.  More than that it’s God’s comfort, and it comes through the faces, hands and hearts of your family, friends and acquaintances.  Take a friend’s hand…it might just be God’s hand.   AMEN!