Making Sense of Your Life – Part 2: An Overflow of Comfort

“When I brought your people out of Egypt, you came to the sea, and the Egyptians pursued them with chariots and horsemen as far as the Red Sea.” (Joshua 24:6)

The Israelites were made slaves in Egypt and suffered at the hands of their cruel slave masters. Does that make any sense, considering the fact that they were God’s chosen people? Perhaps not to you and me in the natural. But God’s ways are not our ways, and his thoughts aren’t our thoughts. And if we try to make sense of things according to our logic or even our culture, we’re certainly not going to understand what God sometimes does in our lives. He allows difficult situations in order to build faith in his people; but there’s more that he wants to do in and through us. He wants us to feel what he feels.

The Bible says that God is the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles. Why? So that we can comfort others with the same comfort we have received from God. That is the story of the Jewish people. If you study their history throughout the ages, you see that they have always looked out for the poor and defenseless and oppressed among them, saying, “We were once treated that way when we were slaves in Egypt."

Have you ever had your heart broken? Hurt by people close to you? Wounded by your own family? Have you ever been let down by a boss? Lied to? Rejected because you’re a Christian? Yes, we can get hurt. But the Lord is the God of all mercies who uses the bruises of life and the heartbreaks so that we can have compassion on others, so we can feel what God feels for them, so we can come alongside them and tell them, “I know you’re crying, and I know it hurts, but don’t give up. Don’t run away, because God can help you in a way that no friend or family member can!”

Aren’t you glad that he’s the God of all comfort, and that the comfort he gives you and me can overflow to the comfort of others?

To be continued…