The Promise of Comfort
For Meditation (Rick Hutton)
This may sound odd, but I don’t like having to receive comfort. It’s not that I don’t like comfort, I’m grateful for it when it’s given, but the fact that I’m in a situation that provides the opportunity for me to receive is what I don’t like. It means I’m in a place or situation that is hard, difficult, painful, and that’s not where I want to be.
Our society in general doesn’t want to have to receive comfort, we’d much rather be comfortable and go about our lives as if nothing were wrong, but Advent doesn’t allow us to do that. In this season many of us are given the opportunity to deal with the difficulties and struggles in the world, as well as to deal with the dark places in our own personal lives. Others of us are in situations where we need comfort because of circumstances entirely out of our control. Wrestling with the brokenness of the world, our own sin, or the difficulties that are thrust is something that rightly should make us uncomfortable. And because everything is not the way it’s supposed to be this is our reality.
The message of Isaiah 40 though is one of comfort. God recognizes the difficulty, struggles, and pain his people have endured and are enduring, and he promises comfort. It’s comfort that gives hope, demands a response, and is intended to bring glory to God and people to himself.
As you look for comfort in this season, where are you looking, and for what purpose? Do the things you look to bring long-lasting comfort or does what they provide eventually fade away? The comfort that we receive from God is an eternal comfort and because that is true, we can have in the midst of the struggles and difficulties we endure in our broken world each day.
May God make his comfort known to us in this Advent season!
Isaiah 40:1-11
1 Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.
3 A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare
the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
5 And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
6 A voice says, “Cry out.”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
“All people are like grass,
and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
7 The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever.”
9 You who bring good news to Zion,
go up on a high mountain.
You who bring good news to Jerusalem,
lift up your voice with a shout,
lift it up, do not be afraid;
say to the towns of Judah,
“Here is your God!”
10See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power,
and he rules with a mighty arm.
See, his reward is with him,
and his recompense accompanies him.
11He tends his flock like a shepherd:
He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young.