God’s Comfort

We are confident that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in the comfort God gives us.

2 Corinthians 1:7

IF YOU HAVE ever seen the movie or read the book The Hiding Place, you know the trials Corrie ten Boom and her family endured at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. Their “crime” had been to harbor Jewish people in their home. Corrie and her sister, Betsie, were interned in Ravensbrück, a women’s concentration camp, where death and torture were the daily fare of the inmates.

When Betsie died from a horrible whipping and general sickness during her time there, Corrie almost fell into despair. But God did a number of things to comfort her. Among them, in one wintry call to attention, a little bird came and sang to the inmates as they stood freezing in the cold. On another occasion, she felt God had even sent the lice in their barracks to keep the guards from stepping in and breaking up their Bible studies. Because Betsie had been such a woman of faith, when she died, the mortician prepared her body so that in Corrie’s mind Betsie looked like a queen, even though dead.

God doesn’t always give us comfort in our sufferings the way we might ask or wish. But his comfort always comes, and it’s often far better and more powerful than any we might imagine. As you go through times of trouble, look for God’s comfort to come, as he has promised.