Back to the Book of Hebrews in a week or so.
Genesis 26:34-35 – When Esau was forty years old, he took Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite to be his wife, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite, [35] and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.
How the Bible is given to understatement! “They made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah”. Nothing here said about the sleepless nights, the anguish, the prayers, the arguments, the stress upon the marriage, the accusations about who was responsible, the sense of failure, shame, pain and challenges to the faith. There is so much carried by that word “bitter”. Their lives are hard and difficult and full of things they do not want. And we see them simply pressing on.
How many simply press on with a comment that “life is hard”? And we shrug it off so easily. We do not hear it. We think that we are the only ones who have it hard. Wouldn’t it be great if someone who heard the understated phrase “life is hard”, grabbed a hold of it and prayed for you – prayed with you? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone knew that behind the simple word “hard” was a life full of doubt and pain and anger and tears? And wouldn’t it be wonderful if they let you know that they were praying and were not going to quit until they got some sense that God had heard and answered.
But such people do not come along very much do they? And part of the reason they do not is because they are hoping that someone will come along and hear all the unmentioned things behind the word “life is hard” that they just dared to utter.
Homes, churches, communities are full of people who are finding life is bitter for some reason or another and simply wanting someone to share a little more with.
You start.
You start, even in the midst of your pain and hardship. You start and let them know that you care. And pray that the Lord will send someone along for you. The church is a mutual help society among all the other things that it is and we have our heads in the sand if we think it is not. And we really have our heads in the sand if we think that our church is not full of people whose lives are very bitter for one reason or another. And we have our ears plugged if we do not hear God saying to us that we are part of the solution.
Pray today for God to use you this week to help someone else who is finding, for whatever reason, that life is bitter. Make life a little sweeter for someone. You may be surprised to find that God will add a little sugar to take away some of the bitterness of your life as well.
Galatians 6:2 – Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
1 Cor. 12:26 – If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
Romans 12:15 – Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
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