If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer.
I wrote this very thing so that when I came I wouldn’t have pain from those who ought to give me joy, because I am confident about all of you that my joy will also be yours.
Obey your leaders and submit to them, since they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account, so that they can do this with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.
Look, I am ready to come to you this third time. I will not burden you, since I am not seeking what is yours, but you. For children ought not to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.
But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.’ Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me.
The king was deeply moved and went up to the chamber above the city gate and wept. As he walked, he cried, ‘My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son! ’