There’s one thing that certainly takes us out of our comfort zone: and that’s when tragedy strikes us.
When we are personally affected by grief and sadness, we know that we’ve moved away from any place of comfort.
We start to hunger for comfort in our time of distress; or to feel compassion in our time of grief.
And it is this kind of comfort that we read about in the opening verses of Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth.
It’s a letter that addresses a church with lots of problems; it’s a church that seems to have more than its fair share of issues.
And as Paul talks to that church in the first century, we today, get to hear God speak to OUR church in the 21st century, a church that is vastly different, yet surprisingly similar.