Paul opens 2 Corinthians with a burst of praise—not because life is easy, but because God meets real pain with real compassion. Today’s verse invites you to see comfort not as a vague feeling, but as something that flows from the heart of the Father through Jesus Christ into your actual story.

The First Move Is Worship, Not Worry

Paul begins by blessing God, calling Him “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3). That’s striking—he doesn’t start with a complaint or a strategy. He starts with adoration. When your soul is shaking, worship isn’t denial; it’s orientation. It turns your face toward the One who is steady when everything else is not.

Try it today: before you replay what hurt you or what might happen next, speak a deliberate blessing over God’s character. The psalmist says, “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted; He saves the contrite in spirit” (Psalm 34:18). Near. Not annoyed. Not distant. Near. Worship reintroduces you to that nearness.

God’s Comfort Is Personal, Not Generic

The comfort of God isn’t a slogan; it’s the presence of a Father who knows your name and your limits. Scripture doesn’t present comfort as coddling—it’s strength given to the weak. “Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). Not some of it. All of it. The invitation is as specific as your fears.

And God delivers comfort through His promises and His Spirit. Jesus said, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever—” (John 14:16), and also, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18). You may feel alone, but you are not abandoned. Comfort has a face: the Father’s compassion, the Son’s faithfulness, the Spirit’s help.

Receive It—and Then Pass It On

God rarely comforts us as an endpoint. He comforts us so comfort can travel through us. “He comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Corinthians 1:4). Your hard season is not wasted when God meets you in it—and then uses you to meet someone else.

So ask a practical question: who around you is carrying quiet grief, private stress, or hidden shame? Don’t rush to fix them; bring the kind of presence God brings—steady, truthful, compassionate. And don’t underestimate Scripture’s role in that comfort: “For everything that was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). When you share His Word with humility, you’re offering more than advice—you’re offering hope.

Father of compassion, thank You for being the God of all comfort; comfort me today, and make me quick to comfort someone else in Your name. Amen.

The church should be a healthy, fruitful vineyard that will bring honor to Christ, a church after Christ's own heart where He can look at the travail of His soul and be satisfied. Among the people should be a beautiful simplicity and a radiant Christian love so it would impossible to find gossips and talebearers. There should be a feeling of humble reverence and an air of joyous informality, where each one esteems others better than himself or herself, where everyone is willing to serve but no one jockeys to serve. Childlike candor without duplicity or dishonesty should mark the church, and the presence of Christ should be felt and the fragrance of His garments smelled by His beloved. Prayers should be answered so regularly that we think nothing of it. It would be common because God is God, and we are His people. When necessary, miracles would not be uncommon. Is that, in the light of Scripture, unreasonable and undesirable to expect of a church? . . . Is this impossible? Is anything impossible with God? Is anything impossible where the Lord Jesus Christ is? Is this unscriptural? No! The only thing that is unscriptural about this vision is that it is not up to the standard of Scripture yet. The scriptural standards are still high. If you answer, No, it is not unreasonable, undesirable or impossible, then you are saying you believe in this. If you believe in this, if you would like to become the church that could begin this reformation, this change toward the better, this recapturing of the ancient power of God in the souls of people, then there must be a radical psychological break with the prevailing religious mood.

And David said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this is worthy of death, . . . because he did this thing, and because he had no pity. And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man! - 2 Samuel 12:5-7

If a man’s own sin is held up before him a little disguised, he says, " How ugly it is! " And if only for a moment he can be persuaded that it is not his own conduct, but somebody else’s, that he is judging, the instinctive condemnation comes. We have got two sets of names for vices: one set which rather mitigates and excuses them, and another set which puts them in their real hideousness. We keep the palliative set for home consumption, and liberally distribute the plain-spoken, ugly set amongst the vices and faults of our friends.

The same thing which I call in myself prudence, I call in you meanness. The same thing which you call in yourself generous living, you call in your friend filthy sensualism. That which, to the doer of it, is only righteous indignation, to the onlooker is passionate anger. That which, in the practiser of it, is no more than a due regard for the interests of his own family and himself in the future, is, to the envious lookers-on, shabbiness and meanness in money matters. That which, to the liar, is only prudent diplomatic reticence, to the listener is falsehood. That which, in the man that judges his own conduct, is but "a choleric word," is, in his friend, when he judges him, " flat blasphemy."

And so we go all round the circle, and condemn our own vices, when we see them in other people. So the King who had never thought, when he stole away Uriah’s one ewe lamb, and did him to death by traitorous commands, setting him in the front of the battle, that he was wanting in compassion, blazes up at once, and righteously sentences the other " man" to death, "because he had no pity." He had never thought of himself or of his crime as cruel, as mean, as selfish, as heartless. But when he sees a partially disguised picture of it, he knows it for the devil’s child that it is.

"Oh! wad some power the gifdie gie us

lo see oursels as ithers see us;

It wad frae many an error free us ":

and so it would, to see ourselves as we see others. We judge our brother and ourselves by two different standards.

For godliness, we need to cultivate the habit of discrimination between good and evil, right and wrong, because the world is full of illusions, and we are very blind. And we need to cultivate the habit of self-control, and rigid repression of passions, and lusts, and desires, and tastes, and inclinations before His calm and sovereign will, because the world is full of fire, and our hearts and natures are tinder. And we need to cultivate the habit of patience in all its three senses of endurance in sorrow, of persistence in service, and of hope of the future, because the more a man cultivates that habit, the larger will be his stock of proofs of the loving-kindness and goodness of his God, and the easier and more blessed it will be for him to live in continual communion with Him. There is no way by which your religion can become deep, all-pervasive, practical, sovereign in your lives, but the old road of effort and of prayer. " Exercise thyself," as a gymnast does in the arena; - exercise thyself unto godliness, - and do not fancy that the Christian life comes as a matter of course on the back of some one initial act of a long-forgotten faith in Jesus Christ.