2 Corinthians 1:3-7

…the God of all comfort.

He comforts us in all our trouble, so that we can then comfort people in every kind of trouble, through the comfort with which God comforts us.

It may be helpful to view every trouble that comes our way simply as God’s “Comfort Delivery System”.

The more crap we go through in a given day, the more God is ready to comfort us in it, shaping us into His unique comforters.

Yes, we are like God’s blankies for the world.

If we allow ourselves to be comforted by Him.

This we can do by looking to God in the midst of stress, relying on Him who raises the dead (v.9), and not solely on ourselves, who cannot raise the dead…or create a universe…or do anything powerful like that.

If we don’t look to God in tough times, we typically just stew in our trouble, complaining, trying to wish it away, wondering “why me?”, all the while being of no help to anyone, perhaps even pulling others down.

I don’t think troubles are designed by God to crush us, but to stop us from relying on ourselves, as Paul writes in verses 8 and 9:

You see, my dear family, we don’t want to keep you in the dark about the suffering we went through in Asia. The load we had to carry was far too heavy for us; it got to the point where we gave up on life itself. Yes: deep inside ourselves we received the death sentence. This was to stop us relying on ourselves, and to make us rely on God who raises the dead.