Photo credit: Shutterstock, Feng Yu

On Tuesday afternoon, while working upstairs in my home office, I overheard my mom making several phone calls to promise prayer for, offer comfort to, and encourage several women who had recently lost their husbands. She understands. She gets it. She’s also recently widowed.

I couldn’t help but think of one of her favorite passages of Scripture as I saw her living it out:

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. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. —2 Corinthians 1:3–5, NIV

You  might reply, “But no one reached out to me. No one understood my needs.” Then you should know how greatly you longed for that and how awful it felt not to receive it. Don’t let someone else feel that way.

What loss, life change, shattered dream, problem, trouble have you gone through that you can use as a springboard for reaching out to others with a heart of understanding? They need you. They need your understanding. God has asked you to share it with them. How will you do that today?