Patiently Endure

"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." (2 Cor. 1:6)

"the same sufferings as we do?" Ouch!
Read this again. Persecution did not stop with
the leadership. There was plenty to go around:
family, friends, jobs, government, religion.
Some lost their lives. Paul's hope is not that
they will escape persecution but that they will
enter into comfort in the midst of persecution.
He says in the next verse: "Our hope for you 
is unshaken, for we know that as you share 
in our sufferings, you will also share in our 
comfort."

Reader, I did not intend to take these verses on.
I quickly chose three verses at the end of a gals
study a couple of weeks ago, as an assignment.
I knew I needed to do what I had asked them
to do. But I was not prepared for their impact
on me. I knew that I needed to dig deep--to
pass it on to you!