Episode 63 - Finding Comfort in Trouble

SHOW NOTES

Today’s Verse: 2 Corinthians 1:1-11 (NIV)

We've all lived through many challenging times in life. And if there ever was a time you might need grace and you might need peace- it's today. It's this week. It's this season of our lives.

Steve weaves this verse and Paul’s story in with our own troubles, and asks the question, how have you experienced the compassion of God in a difficult, anxious time?

It’s easy to lose perspective in anxious times. We pray this resource is a comfort, a reassurance, some peace, some grace.

Reflection: How have you experienced the compassion of God in a difficult and anxious time?

Time Stamp of Podcast

• :57 – Intro with Steve
• 5:23 – Music Break
• 6:38 – Main Podcast on Exhaustion
• 23:23 – Music Break
• 24:39 – Joe’s Soul Care Story
• 28:29 – Music Break
• 29:14 – Joe reads “Blessing for the Brokenhearted” by Jan Richardson
• 30:35 – Closing

MENTIONED IN THE PODCAST  

• 2 Corinthians 1:1-11 (NIV)
• Soul Custody by Stephen W. Smith
• Poem recited by Joe: Blessing for the Brokenhearted by Jan Richardson (from her book The Cure for Sorrow)

Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love.

Let us promise
we will not
tell ourselves
time will heal
the wound,
when every day
our waking
opens it anew.

Perhaps for now
it can be enough
to simply marvel
at the mystery
of how a heart
so broken
can go on beating,
as if it were made
for precisely this—

as if it knows
the only cure for love
is more of it,

as if it sees
the heart’s sole remedy
for breaking
is to love still,

as if it trusts
that its own
persistent pulse
is the rhythm
of a blessing
we cannot
begin to fathom
but will save us
nonetheless.

• Soul Care from an African American Perspective - Episode from Season 3

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