God loves to be a comforter

God loves to be a comforter.  His heart is ever tender and compassionate toward human pain and suffering.  When we look into the Bible we find it full of comfort from beginning to end.  On every page God is trying to get men to believe that He loves them, that He is their friend, that He wants them to do good.  There is not a chapter in the Scriptures which does not in some way reveal or declare divine mercy.  That is what makes the Bible such a dear and precious book to the dreary, the struggling, the disappointed, the wronged, the bereaved, the lonely.  The Bible is like a mother’s bosom, to lay one’s head upon in a time of pain and distress. 

Christ will fill us with Himself

St. Paul tells us here also that he rejoiced in his thorn.  He did not at first.  He cried to heaven to have it removed.  But when his Master told him that he needed to keep it, that he needed it, that it had in it a blessing for him, he chafed no longer.  Indeed, he made friends with it quickly, accepted it, and stopped complaining about it.  That is the only right and sensible thing to do with any disagreeable, uncongenial, or painful thing we find we cannot have removed.  It is God’s will that it should be in our life for some good reason which He knows.  We should get the victory over it by taking it to our heart, by receiving it as coming from Christ. No matter how it hurts us, if we accept it in this way it will leave benediction in our life.  God sends some of our greatest blessings to us in our thorns, and it will be sad thing if we thrust them away and miss them.  There are many who are so full of themselves that they have no room for Christ.  If only they could come empty, empty of self, He would fill them with Himself, and then they would have untold power for good in the world.  We may safely trust Him with the enriching of our lives.  He knows when pain in needful, when loss is the only way to gain, when suffering is necessary to hold us at His feet.  He gives us trouble in order to bless us in some way, and we shall always be losers when we chafe or reject our thorn.  New Martyr Tsaritsa Alexandra (+1918)