Life isn’t meant to be easy. If it was all sunshine and rainbows, it would be heaven. But God put us on earth to endure and rise above. So we will have sufferings. From those sufferings, many things can be learned. We can learn about ourselves and our personal strength. We can learn about who are friends truly are and their roles in our lives. We can learn to feel comfort. We can also learn life is not all about us, and that others suffer, too.
God is the father of all encouragement and compassion. He encourages us in our times of needs so that we can learn and then turn around and help others who are in similar times of need. God encourages us not only with sympathy, but encourages strength and bravery. This encouragement may include God putting someone in our lives for this purpose, to help us through this situation. Sometimes, though, we don’t receive that comfort from God through those other people, because we don’t allow ourselves to accept it. We push forward, thinking we are strong enough and can handle what life throws at us without others. And this is prideful. We need God in our lives to make it through the big things. The saying “God never gives you more than you can handle,” is only part of the story. He never gives more than you can handle without his grace.
St. Paul had many sufferings in his life, as we will read in later chapters. His sufferings were for Christ. He received lashes, beatings, stoning, imprisonments, robbers, dangers from his own city, etc. He welcomes these sufferings so that he could bring the word of God to the people. He never stopped knowing and understanding that his sufferings were the sufferings of Jesus. For those of us who stand firm in God’s name, we will have sufferings. If we ask to be used by Christ to show his work to others, we will endure sufferings. These sufferings are all for God’s name and glory. And from those sufferings, we will receive consolation from God. He will console us in our times of trouble, when we are standing firm in our faith. If we are suffering at work because we refuse to back down from Christian morals and ethics, we will be consoled by God. If we are suffering through family matters because we are holding God’s rules first, we will be consoled by God.
As Christians, we should not get into a “my sufferings are worse than yours” battle. Because none of our sufferings are worse than what Jesus endured. Even St. Paul, with everything he went through, knew that his sufferings paled in comparison to Jesus times. Maybe compare and you might see how light our burden actually is, and that we are better off with our cross compared to that family across the street. Then we might see how we can help them through their suffering from our own learnings and consolation from God.
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