We do not begin to understand what great waste we are allowing when we fail to put the true value on little opportunities of serving others. Somehow we get the feeling that any cross bearing worth while must be a costly sacrifice, something that puts nails through our hands, something that hurts till we bleed. If we had an opportunity to do something heroic we say we could do it. But when it is only a chance to be kind to a neighbour, to sit up with him at night when he is sick, or to do something for a child, we never think for a moment that such little things are the Christlike deeds God wants us to do, and so we pass them by and there is a great blank in our lives where holy service ought to be. –
In That Which is Least in The Book of Comfort
We need great wisdom for the ministry of comfort…. We need to be sure that we understand God's way of giving comfort…. A professor in a theological seminary said to the student: "Never fail in any service to speak a word of comfort. No congregation, however small, ever assembles but there is in it at least one person in sorrow who will go away unhelped if in Scripture lesson, hymn, prayer, or sermon there is nothing to comfort a mourner or to lift up a heavy heart." An American preacher said, "I never look over a congregation of people waiting for a message from my life without thinking of what burdens many of them are carrying, through what struggles they are passing, what sorrow they are enduring, and how much they need comfort and encouragement that they may be able to go on in their pilgrimage journey." –
The Message of Comfort, in A Heart Garden