By J.R. Miller
God loves to be a comforter. His heart is ever tender and compassionate toward human pain and suffering. One of the great chapters of Isaiah opens with these words, "Comfort, comfort My people, says your God." The people were in exile--but now the period of their captivity was drawing to an end, and the messengers were sent to speak words of comfort and cheer.
When Dr. Watson resigned his church in Liverpool after long service, he said that if he were beginning his ministry, instead of closing it, there were three things he would do: He would preach shorter sermons; he would be more attentive to his English; and he would preach more comfortingly. Perhaps it would be a good thing if all who preach would note these wise counsels. If may be that our sermons are too long. It is certain that not all of us give sufficient heed to our English. But perhaps we err most--in not preaching more comfortingly to the people who come to hear us.
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 lips without thinking of what burdens many of them are carrying, through what struggles they are passing, what sorrows they are enduring, and how much they need comfort and encouragement, that they may be able to go on in their pilgrim journey."
Comfort was to be the theme of the ministry of the Old Testament prophets. When we look into the Bible--we find it full of comfort from beginning to end. On every page God is telling His people that He loves them, that He is their friend, and that He wants to do them good. There is not a chapter in the Scriptures which does not in some way reveal or declare, divine mercy. That is what makes the Bible such a dear and precious book to the weary, the struggling, the disappointed, the wronged, the bereaved, and the lonely. Wherever they open it they find the divine sympathy, the divine love, promises of help, of strength, of comfort. So long as there are tears and sorrows, broken hearts and crushed hopes, lives bowed down, and spirits sad and despairing--so long will the Bible be a book which is full of encouragement, light, hope, help, and strength for earth's weary ones. "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort!" 2 Corinthians 1:3
We need great wisdom for the ministry of comfort. Some who have it in their hearts to be comforters of others, altogether fail in their efforts. Job's friends, when they had learned of his trouble, came to sympathize with him. But, instead of comforting him, they made his trouble only the harder to bear, by their ill advised words, telling him that his afflictions were in punishment of his sins, and pitying him because he was enduring sore divine judgments. We can sympathize with him when he cried: "Miserable comforters are you all!"
We need to make sure that we understand God's way of giving comfort. This is beautifully illustrated in the message in Isaiah, "Comfort My people, says your God." These two little possessive pronouns are wonderfully suggestive--"my" and "your"; "My people," "your God." The people were in exile--but they were still God's people. He had not cast them off, though they had sinned. Could any other comfort mean more to our hearts, than to know that God calls us His children? Yet that is our comfort in every hour of suffering, in every sorrow we have to bear. This was the comfort which came to Jesus Himself on the cross. In the darkness He lost sight of God's face for a time. It seemed as though He was forsaken. But in the desolate blackness about Him He still knew that God was His--"My God! My God!" He cried. In the darkness of any sorrow the friends of Christ may always say this. To God's word, "My people," they may answer back, "My God."
There is another suggestive word in the message. "Speak you comfortably to Jerusalem." It was the Hebrew expression for the lover's wooing. The words were those with which a man would plead at a maiden's heart. That is the way God bids His prophets to comfort Jerusalem. That is the way, too, He would have us comfort His children who are in sorrow.
One of the most beautiful words in this great book of Isaiah occurs in the last chapter. God is speaking of the return of blessing to His people after the captivity. "I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream." Then He adds: "As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort." Isaiah 66:13. One of the favorite figures of Isaiah is that of a mother nursing her children and tenderly cradling them in her own bosom. Here it is still the mother who is in the prophet's thoughts--but it is the grown man instead of the infant that he sees coming back with wounds and weariness upon him--to receive his mother's comfort.
God's first coming to us, is in our mother. He could not come then to us otherwise. Infancy could not understand God in His majesty, glory, and greatness. So our mother's tenderness, yearning, devotion, and fondness are from God, revealing of God's own heart, God Himself coming to the child in the mother. We may never be afraid that we can overstate the tenderness and care of God's love. Indeed, we are apt to put God too far off, thinking of Him too much in His majesty and greatness. Sinai is not the truest revealing of Him. Jesus with little children in His arms, or a mother comforting her hurt child, is better.
The word comfort comes from a root which signifies to strengthen. When God comforts us--He does not take away the sorrow. The loneliness is still ours. He does not give back the loved one who has died. Instead of this, He gives us strength to go on in the lonely path without the accustomed presence. He helps us to bear the sorrow--and still sing. He comforts by strengthening. This divine strength comes to us in many ways. Other loved ones left, mean more to us since the break in the circle. We see beauties in them which we had never seen before. The fact that one is gone makes us conscious that we shall not always have even those that now remain, and thus they grow dearer to us. Sorrow draws the household closer together. It makes all more patient with one another, more thoughtful, more kind, more forbearing. It is wonderful how much more comfort we get from those who are living, after bereavement, than we did before. Then the memories of the beautiful lives which have been taken away, become a source of inspiration and strength to us.
Not all sorrow, however, comes through bereavement, and not all of God's comfort is for the bereft. In the case of the people of Israel to whom God sent His prophets with the message of comfort--the sorrow was because of the exile. They had been taken away into captivity. They had been broken as a nation and carried into a strange land. Now the bidding was, "Comfort My people, says your God." They had been crushed and broken--but not destroyed. They would come again from their humiliation, prepared for new glory.
We do not need to go back to ancient history, to find parallels to this experience. The life of earth is full of its captivities, its times of suffering, and its periods of sickness. Many who have had no bereavements, need God's comfort quite as much as those who have had many sorrows. Writers of the history of ancient times, tell us of the benefits which the Jewish nation received from the captivity in Babylon. Before they were carried away--their besetting sin was idolatry. They were continually turning from the true God--to serve the gods of the heathen! But their stay in exile cured them of this sin. In other ways, too, were they benefitted by their captivity. This was God's intention in permitting them to be carried away. The captivity was not an accident. Those seventy years were not lost years. The people were not out of God's thought, nor out of God's care, while away from their own land. God kept His eye upon them, and made their time of captivity, to be a most profitable period for them.
It is the same in the experience of God's children everywhere. There are breaks in prosperity. There are times of sickness, when men are taken away from activity, when their work ceases, and their hands hang down in enforced idleness. There are business failures, experiences which seem disastrous, when the work of years is swept away--when great plans come to nothing. Yet none of these trials are intended to be destructive. True success is not merely a career with no checks, no interruptions, no defeats and failures. We are here rather to grow into godly men. God wants to make something of us--to cleanse us of the evil in us--and to form us into the image of Christ. Ofttimes He can do this only by allowing us to fall under sore discipline.
A musician ordered from a violin maker, the best instrument he could make. At length the musician was sent for to come and try his instrument. As he drew the bow across the strings his face clouded and he became angry. Lifting the instrument he dashed it to pieces on the table, paid the price he had contracted to pay, and left the shop. But the violin maker gathered up the broken pieces and set to work to remake the instrument. Again the musician was sent for, and drew the bow across the strings as before. The violin was perfect. He asked the price. "Nothing," the violin maker replied. "This is the same instrument you broke to pieces. I put it together, and out of the shattered fragments, this perfect instrument has been made." That is the way God does ofttimes with men's lives. They are not what they ought to be. Outwardly they may seem very beautiful--but no sweet music comes from them. They are lacking in spirituality, and the likeness of Christ does not appear in them. Then God permits them to be broken in sorrow or suffering--and with the fragments He makes a new life which yields praise, honor, and blessing.
There ought to be unspeakable comfort for us in this teaching. To many, life seems only a failure. It is full of disappointments. The things we seek elude us, and our hands are empty after years of hoping and striving. There is much sorrow in the world. Many are discouraged and disheartened. It is to these, that God's comfort comes. This is our Father's world, and He never forgets one of His children. We need not be cast down or give up in despair, whatever our experiences may be. The poet's word is true:
"God's in His heaven-
All's right with the world."
But that is only half the truth. "God's in His heaven," truly--but God is also on His earth--always near to each one of His children. He is making us--that is the meaning of the experiences we are having. If only we will leave our lives in His hands, only good can ever come to us.
