Yes, I'm up early, struggling over the current disparities in our beloved nation, compounded by the challenges of capitalism and governance as we know it, a growing wealth gap, the tech revolution and its ensuing joblessness, educational inequities, on and on!
The remedies being brought forward seem limited in wisdom, given the political and spiritual divisions among us.
I found myself substituting the concept of provision for the word comfort in my reading, perhaps taking the concept of brotherly love to a different level:
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all 'provision' who 'provides for' us in all our troubles, so that we can 'provide' those in any trouble with the 'provision we' ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our 'provision' abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your 'provision' and salvation; if we are 'provided for,' it is for your 'provision', which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our 'provision.'"
2 Corinthians 1:3-7 NIV
That's love at a new level...a challenge for the best of us, but perhaps the transformation needed for our great land to survive!
"There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled – in short, from the perspective of those who suffer. The important thing is neither that bitterness nor envy should have gnawed at the heart during this time, that we should have come to look with new eyes at matters great and small, sorrow and joy, strength and weakness, that our perception of generosity, humanity, justice and mercy should have become clearer, freer, less corruptible. We have to learn that personal suffering is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune. This perspective from below must not become the partisan possession of those who are eternally dissatisfied; rather, we must do justice to life in all its dimensions from a higher satisfaction, whose foundation is beyond any talk of ‘from below’ or ‘from above’. This is the way in which we may affirm it."
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(Letters from Prison ).
Yes, still thinking through that graphic!