1606) When someone you know and love is going through something very painful, it’s hard to know what to do, but it’s an opportunity to give someone a gift that is greater and more powerful at a time like this. I have experienced it twice.

When I have been at the edge of despair, two separate individuals at two different decades of my life did one single thing. They listened and said nothing. Instead, they sat and cried with me. Nothing else. No lofty platitudes. No, “I know how you feel”. No, “I’m going to pray for you” (though this isn’t a bad thing – though it would be best to do this silently). No, “you’ll feel better in time or time heals all wounds”. People probably mean well when they say these things but I have found it wasn’t what I needed.

2 Timothy 2:3 alludes to the sitting with someone as I described above. It says, Share in the suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. (ESV). The words share in the suffering in the Greek means to “share the ill-treatment and the pain” of another. This truly is a gift and yes, it’s costly because it’s hard to sit with someone in such pain and yet, some of the most beautiful times in my life have been when two others did this for me. It was costly but that’s what makes it even more beautiful.

This is another example where God can take something horrible and make beauty from it.