God’s Comfort in Trouble

I'm sitting here feeling sorry for myself after returning from a work trip to Atlanta when I see a post on Facebook by a 27 year old girl who was left on the bathroom floor of a Burger King by her mother who gave birth to her there. Can you imagine that? So many strikes against you and you don't even know it yet. You are helpless and alone. What is even more extraordinary is that she still wants to find the person who abandoned her.

I think that life throws you curve balls sometimes just to see how you will react. Will you shut down? Will you end it all by putting a bullet through your skull? Or will you become stronger? Certainly these times make us weak and powerless and feeling helpless. Probably not unlike that infant child at the Burger King, but we must never forget that we are NOT alone and we are NOT powerless as long as we have Christ.

When I reach my lowest of lows I talk to Jesus a lot. I want to try and understand why I am in this situation and what is my lesson to be learned and when I don't get an answer, I know it is because I am not listening and my ego has taken over and that is really unfortunate because just like this verse says, God Answers:

Psalm 20:6
Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed one;God answers his anointed one from his heavenly sanctuary, answering with mighty acts of salvation achieved by his strong hand.

I know that God answers because I have seen His handy work and yet I flail around like a bird with one wing that has been clipped off instead of just going to the Lord in prayer and collecting myself. And then something else terrible happens and something else and pretty soon I'm like an infant myself crying in the bath tub as if my entire world has fallen apart. But it hasn't. Its just a series of minor setbacks. I still have my health, I still have my job and I still have my Lord Jesus. What else do I need?

Over the years, I can say with 100% certainty that every single setback I have had has been met with a gift from God. So why on earth would I not CELEBRATE my setbacks? I guess because I'm human and my human brain is thinking of everything I now have to do in order to fix all of this and in fact I don't. I simply need to hand it over to Jesus and let Him do the work and let me just say that this is so much easier to sit here and write about than it is to actually do! I have to work on this.

In closing, I want to leave you with this amazing verse that just spoke to me today as if Christ himself whispered it into my ears....

[ God’s comfort in trouble ] May the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ be blessed! He is the compassionate Father and God of all comfort. He’s the one who comforts us in all our trouble so that we can comfort other people who are in every kind of trouble. We offer the same comfort that we ourselves received from God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

This note today is MY comfort to you. When life sucks you in and spits you out and you are left wondering which way is up.... take His hand and let Jesus show you!