Comforting people whose lives are at stake is not something I have a lot of experience with. I’ve never personally been in a situation where my life was at stake so I don’t have a lot of experience to draw on when trying to comfort someone else. Yet I have been put in the position a few times to counsel someone in that situation.
After a recent bible study at the local jail an inmate asked my friend and I to visit him. During the visit he explained how he was in the process of being deported back to his home country which is predominantly Muslim and as a Christian he feared for his life. I countries like his there is a real threat of persecution unlike here in the United States where we consider being called stupid because of our faith an instance of persecution. In his country he could be killed for just being known as a Christian.
Finding words to comfort him was difficult. Even more painful was to see the look in his eyes. I can remember the anticipation of having to face my dad after I ditched the family car and hoping that when I woke up the whole thing would’ve been a bad dream. It was a similar look in his eyes but even more intense and understandably so. With every thing we said, in the end I knew and he knew that my friend and I would be going home while he would go back to his cell to await deportation. It would’ve been easy for him to not listen to us or ignore us but he didn’t.
Instead he was comforted not by our words but by the Wisdom of God’s Word that we counseled him with and reminded him of. We reminded Him that God can deliver him from his current situation. We reminded him how Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1 how God gave him the sentence of death so that Paul would trust God. In the end Paul was delivered and was able to comfort others with the comfort that God gave to Paul. But we also had to remind him that while God was able to deliver him in life He may choose to deliver him in death. I know what we spoke to him was the truth but I’ve never had my life on the line to know how comforted I’d be by those words.
In the end we’ll all face death. Some will face it sooner and some later. Though only 45 this man may be forced to face it sooner but the truth be told I could meet my end tomorrow. The only comfort we can offer the inmate is the same for me, is the same for the world and the same that the apostle Paul had known…trust in the God that raised Christ from the dead rather than trust in self. It’s only then that well know what it really means to be comforted and what it means to live.
