Even in hard times? Really?

Our team of 6 ladies planned this month focusing on gratitude months ago. Like every day to come, we didn’t know what the future held for our personal lives as the backdrop for writing about gratitude … even in hard times.  While our Scripture Dig week began reflecting on The Difficult Thanks and Job’s unimaginable circumstances, two of our own team members were in the midst of grief in the loss of loved ones.  Nowhere is God’s truth more real than when we live it out and apply it in the hardest times of life.

If we dig in to what God says about experiencing trouble, we find a rich nugget of truth that gives us a long term look at how God uses fpersonal understanding of comfort.

II Corinthians 1:3-4. “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 have received from God.”

Experiencing comfort, so we are able to comfort.  Learning to give the difficult thanks, so we can help others give the difficult thanks. It’s not easy to give thanks in hard times, but believers who do challenge others to lift the level of our gratitude. They challenge me! Do they challenge you? On Monday Teri Lynne asked, “How do we give the difficult thanks?  Recognize the goodness of God.”

Have you ever had to give “the difficult thanks?”  Have you watched someone else give the difficult thanks?

Is there a truth God has shown you to help you sift thanks out of pain?