JOHN SHIRK – In the Year of Vision, today’s 20/20 Insight focuses on the contagious effect of sympathy.

While the Coronavirus is having a contagious effect on the world in an unhealthy way, there are contagious influences that have a positive effect on our lives.

One of those influences is sympathy, which expresses sorrow with someone in the midst of troubled times.

Second Corinthians 1:3 says, God “comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.”

Jesus went to the cross. He understands our pain. As we find comfort in His compassion, we learn how to be an instrument of God’s grace to someone else in trouble. We are sensitive to their pain, and are willing to walk alongside of them as a voice of comfort.

Focusing on the comfort of God’s love gives us greater clarity for living out the Christian life.  

John Shirk

john@wjtl.com