Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
We have some sad news to share from faithful readers of these little messages, Rod and Mary Cassidy from northern California. Their only child, daughter Brianna, 19, was killed on December 19 in a tragic auto accident. Following is a link to a local news story on the tragedy, and on Brianna's life. A memorial fund has been set up to help defray funeral costs.
http://www.gofundme.com/bmcassidy
Rod asked that we pass this information on to you, and he wrote: "He who said, 'I am the Resurrection and the Life' is more precious to us today than ever." Please keep the Cassidys in your prayers.
Our thoughts also go to another family in northern California who suffered the loss of a beautiful young daughter and sister, Kimberly Orozco, 20, who passed away May 19 as the result of an auto accident involving a drunk driver.
May the Lord comfort both these families in their grief and loss.
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Have you wondered why God permitted you to suffer a keen and painful disappointment? Perhaps an illness, a bereavement, perhaps a love betrayed and lost?
The biggest, most painfully shrieking "Why?" ever screamed was on the cross by the Son of God Himself: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Everything came apart; His life and His mission totally disintegrated; He drank to the full the bitter cup of purest disappointing agony that you have had just a brief taste of; and He drank it to the full so that He could comfort and encourage you now in your experience of pain.
And He permitted you to have this taste of it so that you might share with Him the joy of ministering comfort to someone else who is going through it.
Here is the divine anatomy of comfort: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the all-merciful Father, the God whose consolation never fails us! He comforts us in all our troubles, so that we in turn may be able to comfort others in any trouble of theirs and to share with them the consolation we ourselves receive from God" (2 Cor. 1:3, 4, New English Bible).
To become a pipe through which flows the healing water of life to people who suffer is a little taste of the joy that the Lord Himself knows! We can't fully appreciate what the Son of God went through for us, but this is a little heavenly gift of joy--to become "consolers" who minister the consolation He ministers!
Find somebody (you won't have to look far) who needs a living word of salvation to come from some human lips; and take your place in God's great providence of comfort ministered.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: February 4, 2008
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