Jesus Comforts Us Even in the Dumb Stuff

The science building at our college was set on a hill with a giant wall on the side. Meaning that one section of the wall you could jump over and the drop would be no more than a foot—while further on down the wall the drop would be upwards of 30 feet. While in the middle of a riveting game of campus-wide freeze tag I propelled myself over the wall. I thought I was at a safe foot or two drop. I wasn’t. I knew I was in trouble when I actually had a thought as I was falling. It’s disconcerting when you think to yourself, “Hmm, I haven’t landed yet, this is going to hurt…hmpfff”.

My breath immediately abandoned me. All my bones felts as if they had shifted into the wrong places. I was convinced an ambulance would be in my short future. But then my breath returned (along with throbbing pain) as my friends towered over me asking if I was okay. I lied. There is an unspoken rule that it’s okay to get hurt, it’s okay to be an idiot, but it’s not okay to be hurt while being an idiot. So I pretended like I wasn’t dying.

A good part of the purpose of 2 Corinthians is Paul’s invitation to the Corinthians to partner with him in suffering. This letter is a call to share in the sufferings of Paul and thus the sufferings of Christ and to do this for the sake of their comfort. But the Corinthians were being a bit like me when I pretended like a 15 foot fall didn’t hurt a bit.

Why do we try to keep our problems to ourselves?

I think one of the reasons is because we genuinely don’t want to burden other people with our problems. But I think sometimes we don’t share our sufferings because our suffering is happening because we were being dumb. We figure that we’ve dug ourselves this hole and so we really need to be the ones to get ourselves out of it. Or maybe we are so fed up with victimization and people wanting hand-outs instead of trying to dig themselves that we don’t want to identify with that. And so we isolate. “I’ve got this”. And maybe sometimes we don’t enter into the suffering of another because of the same reason—we realize that they’ve got themselves in this mess and so they need to get themselves out of it.

There is much we have to learn from 2 Corinthians 1. First, notice that God is the source of all comfort. This tells us that there is no lasting, meaningful, comfort apart from God. Yes, He uses means but God is the ultimate source of all comfort. If comfort will be had then it is going to come from His hand.

But notice also that God comforts us in all our affliction. Certainly Paul’s major point here is about affliction caused through our suffering with Christ. But Paul is intentional in his use of words here. He doesn’t want anything to be outside the scope of God’s care and grace.

God doesn’t split our suffering

God doesn’t split our suffering as if there is a kind which is caused by us that we have to solve on our own and then a type of suffering which we are victims of and God is readily available to help with. The point Paul is making in 2 Corinthians is that there is such a unity in Christ that every bit of our suffering (even the stuff that comes from our idiocy) is all part of the sufferings of Christ.He died for our idiocy. He suffered for our stupidity. He bled for our foolishness. He was crucified for our rebellion.

So what is the lesson here? It’s to be honest about our sufferings. Not only as we carry them to the Lord but also as we share them with our fellow believers. It’s vital that we do this because suffering is where Jesus is. When we draw folks into our suffering we are also inevitably drawing them into our comfort—because Jesus will comfort us. And this includes even our suffering for dumb stuff we’ve done.

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