Your story matters because it's meant to bless and benefit others.

What happens if we keep all our stories to ourselves? I know exactly what happens. My father never talked about his life, not his childhood, his family, or his years in the army. He had only one story to tell of his time serving in the infantry in World War II. He was riding a tank in Germany. They stopped for a break. He perched on the outside of the tank while the others took shelter in a barn. Suddenly he had the distinct urge to get off the tank. As soon as he approached the barn, a shell exploded right where he had been sitting. “Don’t you think that was God?” I asked my agnostic father. He shrugged. “Maybe.”

When he died, I realized how much I had lost because of his silence. Don’t let this happen to you! Some of you have lived awhile, and your children and grandchildren don’t know half of your life. They don’t know what you came from. They don’t know what you endured, or all the ways God showed up. 

God’s word makes it clear that our sufferings, our comforts and our joys are meant not to be hoarded, but to be shared, given away.  The Apostle Paul writes, “ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

Everything that has come to you---the ugly, the lovely, the break-ups and tear-downs, the crushes and crashes, the grieving and groaning, the riddles, the cancer, the betrayals---however secret they have come, in whatever darkness they’ve lived, they cannot remain in your closet and under your bed because they are not meant for you alone. Paul writes again, “ 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.  And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.”

I have only one story from my father, but my children will have hundreds from me. Don’t waste the stories in your life that God intends for the blessing of others!

Writing Prompt: Make a list of some of events and stories that involve both suffering and comfort from God that you’d like to pass on to others. Choose one that pulls at you now. Take a few minutes to write what happened, illustrating how God gave you comfort.

Prayer

Dear Lord, thank you for this assurance that our sufferings are not random or trivial. You have great purposes in mind for them. Help me bring language to the trials I’ve experienced and then the comfort I’ve received from you. Through my own stories, help me to bring comfort to others who are suffering.