The Comfort Of Having A Friend To Listen

In one sense, one of the duties of friendship is just to lend an ear.

It is an untold comfort when troubles are depressing us to have someone in whom we can confide.

A brother is born for adversity, not just that he may lend a helping hand. 

A helping hand may be a blessed thing, but a helping heart is often better.

To have somebody to whom we can open our hearts in the certainty of perfect understanding is one of the choicest gifts of human life.

Visitors among the poor have experienced that. How often they bring comfort by just listening!

Poor folk, toiling away bravely, discover an easing of their trouble when they can pour it all, if only for an hour, into a listening and appreciative ear.

Now it was that easing which David found in God. He showed before Him his trouble.

He did not brood on it in solitary bitterness; he quietly laid it before God.

And though the trouble didn't disappear any more than the thorn of the Apostle, he gained a sweet serenity of spirit which made him capable of bearing anything.

And, indeed, that is the real victory of faith and of all who quietly wait on God.

It may not banish all the trouble, but it always brings the power to bear it beautifully.

There is a deep-rooted feeling in the heart that if we are God's, we ought to have exemption.

Troubles that afflict the faithless soul ought to be averted from the faithful. But the age-long experience of God's children and all the sufferings of His beloved Son proclaim that this is not so. 

David was not protected from life's troubles, nor was Paul or our blessed Savior.

David knew, in all its bitterness, what a thing of trouble our human life may be.

His victory, and that of all the saints who have learned to show their trouble before God, was an inward peace that the world can never give and the darkest mile can never take away.

God does not save His children from that dark mile. He saves His children in that dark mile. 

Whenever they show their trouble before Him, He shows His lovingkindness to them.

He keeps them from an embittered heart; He puts beneath them the everlasting arm; He makes them more than conquerors in Christ.

~George H. Morrison~