When I'm in the midst of troubles, I sometimes look at other people and think they are so blessed and wonder why I am so troubled and they are so happy. Troubles have a way of multiplying misery until you can't see beyond the immediate situation.

But reality is that every human being has troubles and knows misery very intimately. My own troubles seem so bad because they are MY troubles. And when I am in the midst of my own troubles, everyone else's troubles seem ever so much smaller and less reasonable than my own.

Yet if you were to look out upon humanity, you would not find a single person who has not suffered and known pain. There are none who walk around shrouded with apparent blessings, free from trouble. Thus we all have trouble in common.

There is no life of utopia. No one has received a free ticket to happiness. Some are more open about their pain than others but all have it. The fact that this is a common denominator for us all should cause us to be more compassionate for each other. But pain has a way of making it seem unbearable to consider anyone else when we are hurting so bad ourselves.

Here is a mystery! When we are in pain ourselves, the key to relieving that pain is to look outward rather than inward. In the very midst of pain if we do something to relieve someone else's pain, we relieve our own.  When considering someone else's pain ours suddenly does not seem so overwhelming. When trying to help someone else we are helped ourselves.

Being human, about the last thing you want to do when you are having problems, is to go find someone else and think about their problems and how you can help them with those problems. Yet in the helping we are helped. JAMES 5:16 puts it this way: Confess your faults one to another and pray one for another, that you may be healed.

Looks like this would be a good day to go a-hunting for someone who is in worse shape than me! Someone out there is suffering and hurting just like I am and even worse. When I find them and help them I'm going to feel a whole lot better! Rev Mary