The God Of All Comfort

From Jenny:

Yesterday, the teacher of our Lifegroup class (Sunday school, small group, etc.) led a discussion on the discipline of prayer. He challenged us to pray according to God's promises in the Bible and the example Jesus gave in the Lord's Prayer.

This was a timely lesson for me. I hung on every word, taking notes, blinking back the tears as we went around the room and shared our prayers and praises, then held each up to the promises of Scripture.

When I mentioned my dad and the latest on his condition, our conversation turned toward a passage of Scripture found in 2 Corinthians.

2 Corinthians 1:2-4

2Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The God of All Comfort

3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,

4who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

I love these verses. They're part consolation (He is the God of Comfort!) and part commission (there's a job for us to do, too!). And I can't tell you how amazing it is to see that kind of encouragement working itself out in the body of Christ... especially in the midst of Dad's current condition.

Many of you have read this blog regularly and left comments of encouragement based on how you have been comforted in your own troubles. Thank you!

I have a friend from church who's dad was recently diagnosed with cancer as well. Yesterday, we sought each other out just for a quick hug. Not much needed to be said or done. But the embrace gave us a common comfort.

God has clearly given us a job to do now. So when we pray, we pray that whenever this particular season ends for our family, we never let the opportunity pass us by to extend the same level of consolation to another person who might be walking into a time of "trouble".

We're also praying tonight that the season of "living at Moffitt" will be over soon. The last 24 hours have brought a bit of good news! After several days of not eating, my dad finally got a little bit of food in his system. He had a platelet infusion today which apparently really boosted those platelet numbers.

Another huge accomplishment was a short walk with the physical therapist this afternoon.

We are still waiting and watching for the white blood cell counts to rebound from zero... but they haven't made the turn yet...

I sure hope that I got all that information right. In the grand scheme of things, our sister Emily is definitely more of the "details" person.

My mom shared this information with me earlier today, and before REALLY concentrating on the facts, I came away with:

This morning: BAD
This afternoon: GOOD
The blog should say: Keep up the prayers!

Just be glad Adam hasn't written a post yet. After almost a full year of law school, there would be a whole lot of "aforementioned"'s, "herein"'s, "pursuant to"'s, "whereas"and "I object!"'s to sort through before you got any news on Dad!