By J.R. Miller
After all, the most heart satisfying comfort in time of trouble, is found in God Himself, and not in anything God says or does. The Christian revelation concerning death brings comfort, when we learn to think of it as really only a process in which the life passes out of limitation, imperfection, and unattainment; emerging into rich beauty and wondrous enlargement. The truth of immortality also gives comfort, as we think of our godly friends entering upon an existence in blessedness which shall never have an end. There is comfort, too, in the assurance that God makes no mistakes in any of His dealings with us, and that in time, we shall see beauty and good--where now we see only what seems to be marring and hurt. We get a measure of comfort, also, in the divine assurance that "all things work together for good to them that love God," that sorrow has a mission, and that within every trial, God sends a blessing.
But the comfort which means most to the heart which is bruised or broken, is that which comes in the personal revealing of God, and in the experiences of communion with Him. One of the common failures of Christian faith, is in being satisfied with God's gifts and not then going on to find God Himself. God is always better than His best gifts. Always it is true that "the gift without the giver is bare." Especially is this true of God and His gifts.
We have illustrations of this in human friendships. One comes into our life, who does many things for us. His words encourage, cheer, and strengthen us. His kindness adds to our pleasure. His helpfulness in many ways, makes our burdens lighter. But we have never yet entered into close relations with Him. There has been no occasion in our life, no time of need, to draw Him near to us in those revealings in which the heart gives its best. We know Him only through what He has done for us in a general way. But at length there comes an experience of common kindness and helpfulness, the man gives us part of himself. We often hear it said of some friend: "I knew him for years, and he did a great deal for me; but I never learned what nobleness there was in his nature, what treasure of good there was in his friendship, until the time of my great need a few months since, when he came into my life with all his marvelous power of personal helpfulness." No longer was it merely the things the man did, which gave help--it was now the man himself who poured out the wealth of his own life, and this was better than the best of all his gifts, and of his services.
It is the same with God. There are many people who receive countless blessings from Him and who rest on His promises, who yet do not get to know God Himself in a personal way. There are many who for a time trusted Christ and found great comfort in the assurances of His love--but who at length, in some season of trial, entered into close relations of personal friendship with Him. In this revealing they found treasures of love, of sympathy, and of comfort, far surpassing the best they had ever experienced before. In seeking, therefore, for help in sorrow, we should never be content with the gifts of God alone, or with the comforts which come in His words of promise; we should pass beyond all these to God Himself and seek satisfaction in the infinite blessedness of His love.
It is thus that the Scriptures represent God. He is ever, with lavish hand, dispensing His mercies and benefits--but He would not have us content with these. "He makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust." But He desires to manifest Himself to His children as He does not to the world. The great Bible saints found their satisfaction and their help, not in God's gifts--but in God himself. Thus the reason for David's sublime assurance, "I shall not want," was not because he had great stores of God's gifts laid up--but because "the Lord is my Shepherd." His confidence was not in the wealth which God had given him, which would cover all his wants for the future--but in God Himself.
In another psalm, the writer's intense longing is not for any mere tokens of divine goodness, any mere benefits or favors--but for God Himself. "As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for You, God. I thirst for God, the living God!" Psalm 42:1-2 His thirst was unappeasable in any way--but in fellowship with God. Nothing that God could have given him of the richest of His gifts, of the sweetest blessings of His hand, would have satisfied him. It was for God Himself, the living God that he thirsted. The human soul was made for God, and God alone can meet its need.
The only heart-filling comfort, therefore, in time of sorrow is that which is in God Himself. It is thus, too, that our Father desires to bless us; He asks for our fullest trust, and He would reveal Himself to us in tenderest personal ways. After Horace Bushnell's death, there were found, dimly penciled on a sheet of paper, laid in his Bible, these words: "My mother's loving instinct was from God, and God was in her love to me first--which love was deeper than hers and more protracted. Long years ago she vanished--but God stays by me still, embracing me in my grey hairs as tenderly and carefully as she did in my infancy, and giving to me as my joy and the principal glory of my life, that He lets me know Him, and helps me, with real confidence, to call Him my Father."
That is very beautiful. Mother love is God coming to us in an incarnation which even infancy soon learns to understand. What the mother is to her baby, God is to His child unto the end. The Scriptures strive continually to make the truth of the divine nearness real to us. We are taught to call God our Father--but there is something about the mother's relation to her child which is even closer and tenderer than a father's. So when God is seeking most earnestly to make His people understand the tenderness of His love and yearning for them, He says, "As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you."
Jesus went straight to His Father with all His troubles. He was not content with any logic of comfort, or any promise of divine good in the final outworking of events. He believed all this--but in His trial He wanted the blessing of His Father's presence, the warmth of the Father's embrace. Continually we find Him fleeing away from the throng, from hatred and persecution, to commune with God. In the hour of His extremist sorrow, while He sought also human sympathy, it was to His Father that He turned for real comfort. "Being in an agony--He prayed." Our Master's example should be our guide in ever experience of grief or trial.
Persuasions, arguments, and promises, however true, precious, and divine they may be, will never bring perfect quiet to a heart in its anguish. We may listen to all that earth's most skillful comforters can tell us, even of the consolations of the word of God--but our lonely spirit will be lonely still. There may be an assent to all that is said to us, and our mind may acquiesce, finding a measure of rest; yet still in the depths of our being we remain uncomforted. Something is lacking. But if we creep into God's bosom, and nestle there like a tired child in the mother's arms, and let God's love enfold and embrace us, and flow into our heart, however deep the sorrow may be--we shall be comforted, satisfied. And even if every source of human joy has been cut off, and we are left utterly bereft--we can still find in God that which will suffice.
There is a blessing in true human sympathy. God sends our friends to us to bring us little measures of His own love--little cupfuls of His grace. But He Himself is the only true comforter. His love alone is great enough to fill our heart, and His hand alone has skill to bind up our wounds.
