Comfort One Another

        In baseball, when a ball is thrown and is heading in one way and then begins to go another, we might say that it is a "curve" ball.  We figure that it is going to be at a certain place at a certain time and get ready to swing the bat but then find that it isn't where it should have been.  Life is filled with a lot of "curve" balls.  I seem to have had a few the past few days but we have to put up with the curve balls that come our way.   First Thesssalonians 4:18 says, "Wherefore comfort one another with these words."
      What we need to realize is that there is comfort in this life even when the curve balls come, and if they have not come already, they will pop up every now and then.  This verse is but one of over 100 times that it occurs in the New Testament.  This one, in First Thessalonians, is the "biggy."  We have comfort in this life because of what is going to take place in what we call the "rapture" of believers.  So, no matter how bad things look or feel, we can have comfort in the outcome.  No matter, how cold, how desolate, how discouraging or how unhappy we are at the time, God has a way of comforting us.  In this case, He comforts us with the words of one of the greatest promises ever given.  The description of the event goes from verse thirteen to verse eighteen and Paul says at the end, that we can comfort each other with these words.  It is because we can read the end of the story and know how God is going to take care of everything in one of the most spectacular ways ever.  There are a lot of people alive in the world today that do not believe in the possibility of the rapture of the church.  It doesn't sound possible to them and so they just laugh it off as a fairy tale.  I, however, believe in the miracles of the Scripture even when they don't seem possible.  I believe in the miracles of the New Testament and the Old Testament, and I will cling to the hope they give even as the Apostle Paul said in this verse.  I don't know how television works, but watch something on it almost every day.  I don't know how my phone works, but use it anyway.  There are many things that come to me in the shape of a curve ball, but I still have hope in what God did, what He is doing and what He will do in the lives of each and every person upon this earth.  I often end these little devotions with an admonition to praise God.  Certainly, we should praise God for what He is doing in our lives today and to worship Him, not just a few times a week, but each and every day and then to rejoice in His statement through the Apostle Paul,  "Comfort ye..."