Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
2 Corinthians 1:3-5
When we were on active duty some of our very best friends went through an amazing trial. They desperately wanted a child and had already had one miscarriage. They got pregnant again and that baby was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, which is a genetic disorder in which the fetus has three copies of the 18th chromosome (or something like that, I still don’t fully understand). Babies that have this usually don’t make it full term, if they do they are usually still-born, and if they are born alive they rarely live longer than a few days. Needless to say, our friends were heartbroken. The doctors advised an abortion, but our friends said no to that. They carried the baby to full term, but the baby died during, or shortly before, birth. Despite all of our prayers, faith, and hope that God would miraculously heal this baby, He chose not to. None of us understood at the time why God allowed this to happen.
We had no idea how to comfort our friends, but God did. He comforted them in the midst of this trial, and gave them His peace. The peace that transcends all understanding. Then the most amazing thing happened, they were able to comfort others. They held a funeral service for their daughter at the 82nd Airborne chapel and they got up and shared how God’s comfort allowed them to get through this situation. They shared how they were able to have hope in the midst of this trial because of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They had an alter call at the end of the service and there were five or six Soldiers who came down and gave their life to Christ. There was also a couple who was on the brink of divorce who decided to stick together and work things out. Shortly after our friends lost their baby there were a handful of other cases of Trisomy 18 at Ft. Bragg and they were able to reach out to those families and help them through. Just like this verse in 2 Corinthians says, our friends were able to pass on to others the comfort and hope that they had received.
We are Christ’s ambassadors on this earth, His body, His reflection. God allows us to go through trials, and comforts us in them, so that we can show that love to a lost and hurting world. I will never forget what God did in and through our friends while they were in one of the most difficult situations I can imagine. I encourage you to examine your own lives, think about the trials you’ve faced and the comfort, hope and compassion you’ve received. Now look for ways to pass that on.
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