The
Father of all Comfort by Pam Worsey
Hear these wonderful words of Jesus, “Blessed, (or happy), are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” As we reel under the crushing blows of bereavement and pain that this life inflicts, it’s hard to believe those words isn’t it, and yet they are spoken by the Son of God, and He is ‘the Truth’. But how can we begin to translate those words into our experience? How can we be ‘happy’, which is even harder to believe than ‘blessed’ - in our pain’?
In
the Jerusalem Bible, we read, “Blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, a gentle Father and the God
of all consolation, who comforts us in all our sorrows, so that
we can offer others in their sorrows, the consolation that we
have received from God ourselves” (2 Cor.1:3-4) Isn’t
this the answer? How often, when crying
out to God for His comfort, do we stop at, “Bless me, comfort
me,” whereas we should be continuing our prayer with…..
“so that from this experience I can learn from You, how
to pass on Your comfort to others who are in need”.
Now
I am not suggesting that we push ourselves out to comfort others
during the acute stages of grief and suffering.
At this time God sends loving people to minister His comfort to
us, and pours His Love and comfort into us as we seek His Face;
although it is amazing how He will sometimes use us in the midst
of our weakness to be an unconscious blessing to others.
We all have a need for a time of grieving and to deny this is to
store up trouble for the future when the suppressed pain will be
bound to surface in some form.
However,
as we seek God’s comfort for ourselves, we can always do so
with the awareness that everything God allows to happen in our
lives, He can use for good; for ourselves and others, thus
helping us to become better, not bitter, through
our pain. If those words are difficult for
someone reading this please believe me when I say I do understand,
for I would not dare to write so were it not written following
training in the school of experience. I have
been privileged to walk the path of suffering through most of my
life, the most recent experience being the sudden death of my son
just 3 years ago.
So,
how do we begin to receive God’s blessings and comfort for
ourselves so that we can then pass these on to others?
There are of course many ways and only God knows our individual
needs. As Christians, we shall obviously be
turning to our Church for support, both through the services and
the people, and no doubt we shall be spending more time in prayer
and Bible study, for it is in the times of desperate need that we
seek God most. How that must grieve His Love,
but how patiently understanding He is with His fickle children.
When
we are overcome with the painful blows that this life can
inflict, heart bleeding and torn with an anguish that we don’t
feel another could ever know or understand, and a pain so intense
it rivals physical pain, where do we go? What can we
do? Prayer maybe seems to just hit the ceiling,
even though we are spending almost every hour of the day and
night crying out to God, and we sometimes look, it seems
in vain, for comfort from God’s Word.
“Where is God in all this?”, the
broken heart sometimes cries, “why doesn’t He
answer?” Well, we all know the story of
Lazarus’ fatal sickness, and the despair of his sisters
Martha and Mary when Jesus did not appear to respond to
their call for Him to come and heal their brother.
So here surely is one of our first lessons; our cry for help is
always heard. An apparent denial by the
Lord is only that, apparent, for He who is perfection, is
working all things for our best good and His Glory.
It may need our patience until we meet Him face to face to get
the answers to apparently unanswered prayers, but meanwhile, to
quote Mother Basilea Schlink, “Lord, I don’t
understand You, but I trust You” is a prayer which must
surely delight His Heart. If even that seems too hard
a thing to pray, a willingness to do so on our part is enough,
for He will then surely supply the grace.
We
are told, “Come near to God, and He will come near to you.”
(James 4:8), this is God’s word, it is a promise.
It does not depend on our feelings, but on our unchangeable,
loving, trustworthy promise-keeping God. He is
calling us even in these times of anguish and pain, to draw near,
perhaps only able to cry out from the depths of our being with
one word - ‘HELP’ - but that one word, cried out in
faith, summons all Heaven to our aid. Again faith may
need to be exercised to believe this, because nothing appears to
change; but isn’t this all part of our maturing as
Christians, because it is a well known fact that we all grow more
spiritually through the times of trial than in times of ease.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers (and
sisters) whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know
that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature
and complete, not lacking anything “. (James 1:2-4)
As
we act out our faith and as we take those first faltering
steps, we experience the flooding of Divine Grace. Enabling
us to obey the next command “to give thanks in
all circumstances”, (1 Thess.5:18).
Hebrews 13:15 is of tremendous comfort here, as God acknowledges
our frailty and that praise is sometimes a sacrifice but it is
‘through Jesus’ that we can do this. Interestingly
the following verse seems to confirm the theme of these thoughts “And
do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such
sacrifices God is pleased”. How wonderful,
even in the midst of our anguish, we can do something which will
please God.
In
this attitude of adoration and thanksgiving, we are far more
likely to hear God speaking His words of comfort and love to us.
The Psalms are full of God’s comfort and love (e.g.
Psalm 50:15), and also the down-to-earth cries of the soul in
anguish, these words can be a source of tremendous help, enabling
us to verbalise our pain and be real with God.
Psalm 71:20-21, is full of words of comfort and promise to
be received and appropriated, and covers many of the differing
types of experience which cause us pain and grief. Isaiah 66:13
is surely a wonderful word for us all. We also have
our Lord’s words of comfort in the New Testament, e.g. Jn.14:1
and Jn.16:13. As we seek God in His Word for ourselves, asking
the Holy Spirit to speak just to us, He will indeed do that, and
we will be amazed at the deepening intimacy which will result in
our relationship with the Lord so revealing one of His purposes
for us in our sufferings.
As
we are drawing to a close with these
thoughts on receiving God’s comfort for
ourselves in order to be able to pass it on to others, more words
from the Sermon on the Mount, are relevant. Jesus
tells us in Matt 7:7 & 8 to “ask and it will be given
you” and “... for everyone
who asks receives”. It is so important
at these times, when our thinking is frequently muddled and
chaotic, to remember that God is still our wonderful Father, our
‘Abba’ or ‘Dad’ as Jesus taught, and He just
wants us to ask Him for what we need like little children.
So if we need comfort, ask for it, also for endurance,
perseverance, grace and the ability to obey. It
is no use our moaning about the lack of these and other things if
we have not asked God for them, because as James tells us in Ch 4
2b “You do not have because you do not ask God”.
Finally,
when things are at their blackest, sometimes the only thing to do
is to prayerfully grit one’s teeth and then go out and do
something for someone else in need. If one is tied to
the house or bed-bound. this is still possible, because there are
always people needing our prayers one news bulletin on the
television is enough to give many subjects for prayer. As we then
forget ourselves in the loving service of others, God’s
comfort will flow in, because didn’t Jesus Himself say, “…whatever
you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did
for Me”, and He will always reward His faithful children.
As
we allow the Holy Spirit to teach us how to receive God’s
comfort and become equipped to pass this on to others, we may
be sure that when He knows we are ready, He will send into
our lives those who are longing to experience the comfort of God.
Then we in our turn receive greater comfort still - the comfort
of knowing that we are doing our Father’s will.
“I,
even I, am He Who comforts you”
(Isaiah
51: 12a.)