Make room for Grace

2 Corinthians 1:5-7

Love shares abundantly and I hope you have discovered that in your life.  I found it’s often overlooked, when one is so self-absorbed they can miss out on the grace being shown to them.  Especially when it comes to suffering, we are often in a pity party and are so captivated by our present condition that we have no room for grace; and yet it is grace we need.

In verse three we learned that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in any affliction.  So how are you doing in the good times, you know the family is all well, the husband just got a dream job, you're buying the summer place in the mountains or at the beach, all is good, really good.  Is there room for Jesus in this blessing, have you extended comfort to the neighbor who just lost his job, or when the wife found out she has stage four cancer and the husband is a wreck filled with doubt about how he is going to manage four children under the age of ten, are you giving comfort?  For that is where verse five is taking us, “For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ, we share abundantly in comfort too.”   

I have some dear friends who for the last few years it has been a series of events, first the wife goes in for a biopsy on her brain and leaves the hospital with the right side of her body paralyzed.  She cannot speak and up until that day she worked as a speech teacher with the handicapped.  The husband has four children and a wife to care for, and one kid is getting ready to attend college.  The daughter helps out and takes care of the younger two kids and for years is her dad’s right arm, but when she goes to college she falls for a guy, and it does not go well.  She is no longer open to her parent's counsel, and once more something bad happens to very good people.   But my young friends had experienced the love of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who is the Father of mercies and God of all comfort and comforts us, in any affliction. 

They applied, yes they lived out for all of us to see the grace that only our Father can give in times like these, and I saw in how they responded to what the apostle Paul is telling us in verse 6 and 7; “If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.”  Many of those close to them, neighbors, people at work, many who knew their story were blessed as they shared in their afflictions and have witnessed the grace of a Father of mercies and a God who comforts us in any affliction.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice