Mission: Bring Jesus' love into the world

Brenda Winter is working with the Rock the Edge “Service Over Self” mission week project this week and prepared this devotion to present to the participants. The devotion is based on 2 Corinthians 1:3-7.
 
Those of us on Team 12 spent the past two days doing housework and yard work for an older widow. Her husband died suddenly last fall. The day that he died, she went out to the garage to tell him supper would be ready in a few minutes. She waited a while, then called him on his cell phone to tell him supper was ready. He didn’t answer. She waited a while, then went back to the garage. He had fallen off a ladder and hit his head on the cement. He was dead.
The lady cried when she told us about her husband. The plans they had to retire this year and travel together. She said they always did things together — like housework and yard work. The kitchen that Team 12 was painting was the kitchen her husband had been promising to paint for five years. The trees in the yard that Team 12 was trimming were the trees he would have trimmed if he’d been alive.
She cried when she told us how the neighbors came to help. How people are telling her she has to sell her acreage and move to town. She cried when she couldn’t decided on what color to paint the kitchen. She said she used to pick the color with her husband.
She also said thank you about a hundred times. “I can’t believe God sent somebody to help me. I just can’t believe it.” Later she said, “You have no idea how much this means to me. I just didn’t know how I was going to get this done. I feel better already. I haven’t felt this happy since before he died. You are angels. You have no idea what this means to me. You have no idea.”
2 Cor 1:3-4 says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”
We might think of comfort as giving somebody a little hug or a squeeze. The words “all comfort” in this passage translate as the Greek word paraklesis. The idea behind this word for comfort in the New Testament is always more than soothing or sympathy. It has the idea of strengthening, of helping, of making strong. 
The Latin word for comfort is “fortis,” which also means “brave.”
Some of the jobs you are doing this week are helping to make people braver and stronger. I saw the picture of the little boys at the trailer park helping make the sandbox. What do you think it feels like to be a five-year-old boy and some people come out of nowhere and make a cool toy for you and your friends? Do you think it makes you feel worthy? Important? Maybe a little braver?
Or, what if you lived at the Blue Mound Tower and some people who don’t even know you come to hang out and make root beer floats for you. Why are they here?
2 Cor 1:3 says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
Maybe no one will ask you this week why you are here. Why are you trading a perfectly good week of sleeping until noon to get up and do somebody else’s chores?
2 Cor 1: says, “... so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 
You might show up at your job site today with a paintbrush or a hammer or a cleaning rag or root beer or some lumber. But you are also showing up with the comfort of God. The people you are helping had a problem they couldn’t solve — so God sent you and your team.
Your purpose, my purpose, the purpose of all people who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ is to bring His love into the world — and our world right now is Luverne and the area around Luverne.
If you think about it tonight before you fall asleep, thank God for the people He’s put into your life who gave you comfort when you needed it and then thank Him that this week, He’s using you “... to comfort those in any trouble with the comfort you yourself have received from God.”