Common Uncommon

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
2 Corinthians 1:2-5

Sometimes life really sucks. The farther along the continuum of suffering you go, the more it hurts. And death, or pending death, ranks pretty high up there. One of my grandmas is dying. And she is miserable. And it hurts me that she is miserable, because I love her! At the same time, I feel almost guilty because a close friend of mine is facing the death his mother. But while death hurts differently, it ALWAYS hurts.

That's the bad news.

Last night, I mentioned my grandma at prayer meeting. And I was so blessed because a previously unknown to me sister in Christ prayed for my grandma and my family. This morning I was thinking about how glorious it is that God uses people who are strangers passing through our lives to give us comfort. And how sometimes those "strangers" become incredibly dear. So as I pondered this morning, I became very thankful for this common, uncommon faith. Common as in shared. There have been thousands upon thousands upon ten thousands upon ten thousands (maybe even millions upon millions and more) of believers throughout history. Only God knows the exact number. And we share faith in Him. But uncommon because of its content and result.  

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,
1 Corinthians 1:27-28
 
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 5:1-5