People can be preoccupied with the fact that they are despised. The believer says, this is not only irrelevant, but it is not true. The child of God has understanding; he is loved by the highest being in the universe. We have to tell ourselves that this is true. We cannot necessarily drive these gloomy feelings away, but we have to resist them and not allow them to swallow us up. tell ourselves. This will limit what we may feel.
‘By this we learn that if we would rightly comfort the sorrowful and afflicted, we must not come with an unkind heart as of steel or iron, but we must be pitiful. A man should not think himself fit to comfort those who are encumbered with trouble, unless he clothe himself with their feelings, that is to say, unless he puts himself in their situation … For it is impossible to use the doctrine that is fit to relieve the griefs of our neighbour, unless we feel them and are touched with them ourselves’ (Calvin – English updated).
‘When any of us is in trouble, he must take care to apply Holy Scripture so as to be comforted by it. For if a man comes to us and heaps more trouble on us when we are already in distress, we would soon say it was a great cruelty … and yet every one of us does the same thing to himself. In what way? If I am in heaviness and use Holy Scripture to comfort myself, I do not take the texts that can do it. Instead, when I face any adversity, instead of Scripture making me taste God’s goodness for my comfort, I set myself on fire and increase my grief more and more … We do not have the skill to comfort ourselves as we ought and as God would have us do. Therefore let us not only have pity and compassion on our neighbours when they are in trouble, but let each of us consider himself to rightly comfort and assuage his own sorrows when in any extremity’ (Calvin – English updated).