Forgiveness does not come easily to us, especially when someone we have trusted betrays our trust. And yet if we do not learn to forgive, we will discover that we can never really rebuild trust.
Comfort
Aristeides
If any righteous man among the Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God, and they escort his body with songs and thanksgiving as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby.
Aristeides (125 A. D.)- A non-Christian Greek, in a letter.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
There is an essential difference between the decease of the godly and the death of the ungodly. Death comes to the ungodly man as a penal infliction, but to the righteous as a summons to his Father’s palace. To the sinner it is an execution, to the saint an undressing from his sins and infirmities. Death to the wicked is the King of terrors. Death to the saint is the end of terrors, the commencement of glory.
Robert Murray M’Cheyne
You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness. Then He is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, a rock rising above the storm.
William Gurnall
Great comforts do, indeed, bear witness to the truth of thy grace, but not to the degree of it; the weak child is oftener in the lap than the strong one.
Samuel Chadwick
Compassion costs. It is easy enough to argue, criticize and condemn, but redemption is costly, and comfort draws from the deep. Brains can argue, but It takes heart to comfort.
Ray Vander Laan
The shepherd isn’t always out in front, leading his sheep…. In the lengthening twilight, when the sheep must pass through the darkest shadows in the deepest wadis, the shepherd drops back and walk with them.
Thomas Scott
No affliction nor temptation, no guilt nor power of sin, no wounded spirit nor terrified conscience, should induce us to despair of help and comfort from God.
Billy Graham
Whatever affliction comes into our life, our Lord goes into the valley with us, leading us by the hand, even carrying us when it is necessary.
Jason Vallotton
The Lord uses adversity in our lives for His purposes. He doesn’t always deliver us from resistance, because His first concern is not our comfort. God wants us to become like Him—perfect, not lacking anything. Like the farmer, if we skip the process of breaking the hard ground and tilling the soil, the seed that we scatter will not take root but will wither and die under the scorching sun.