"Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing."- 1 Thessalonians 5:11
A couple
weeks ago I wrote about Ray, an old man dear to me and my mother who was dying.
He has since passed peacefully. After he passed, my mom told me she was going
to spend the next few days in his chair. It was the La-Z-Boy he sat in everyday
that he bought himself less than a year ago. It’s very comfortable. More
importantly, I think my mom finds it comforting to sit there because it was
Ray’s.
When we’re
sad, distressed, or discouraged, we need comfort. Comfort comes in many
different forms, but when I used to be depressed I was always acutely aware
that as a Christian I should be seeking comfort in God.
I believed
this because of verses such as 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “Praised be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of tender mercies and the God of all
comfort, who comforts us in all our trials so that we may be able to comfort
others in any sort of trial with the comfort that we receive from God.”
As well as,
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm
23:4).
There are
tons of others that describe God as the one who provides comfort in our times
of trial, yet I’ve always wondered how that comfort is accessible. From my own
experience, I’ve always experienced the most comfort when there is a person
listening to me or giving me a hug. I need someone to physically be present,
which I believe is the case with most, if not all, human beings. This
physicality can be found in other people, or even objects such as children’s
safety blankets, or in my mom’s case, an old man’s chair.
How can God
give us this comfort when He is not physically with us? In searching for the
answer to this question, I first explored what comfort is and how we typically
receive it.
Jason Inman
in his article, “4 Ways to Find Comfort in God, Despite Pain,” gives a very
good historical context for the word comfort
and how we’ve come to know it today. The word comfort comes from the Latin parts com, meaning “together with” and fortis, meaning “strong or strength.” Together it is
“together-strength,” or the way I like to see it, “strength found in being with
others.”
The word
would change a few more times, with its later Latin word confortare meaning “to strengthen much.” The Old French word conforter brought “solace” and “help” to
the definition. Then in the 14th century, the French word conforten is “to cheer up, console.”
Which brings us to the 17th century and the word and definition we
have today, which “implies the sense of physical ease that we understand today.”
Inman states that comfort started as
“together-strength” but has come to mean “pain-barrier.”
I like both
definitions, because comfort can mean that through strength in others we are
barred from pain. It’s a beautiful way to see comfort. This definition implies that
we cannot be comforted by ourselves. Whether we’re looking at the original definition
or the one we’ve come to know, other people are necessary contributors to
strengthen us or help us feel better when we’re down.
But how do
other people make us stronger? Brené
Brown would probably say by entering into our pain. In her Ted Talk “On Empathy,” she explains what we need, and what we don’t need, when we are low. She
explains how someone else’s empathy makes us feel better because “empathy is
feeling with people.” It’s trying to understand their pain and situation and to
sit with them through it. Not from a distance, not trying to cheer them up, but
to be sad with them. She explains, “Because the truth is, rarely can a response
make something better. What makes something better is connection.”
A great
example of what this looks like in the Bible is in the story of Job. Job was a
righteous man loved and blessed greatly by God. He had a lot of wealth, a lot
of children, and lived a life that brought God much happiness. The story goes
that one day Satan challenged God about Job. God tells Satan, “Have you
considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless
and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:8).
Satan
replies, “Does Job fear God for nothing?... You have blessed the work of his
hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now
stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse
you to your face” (Job 1:9-11).
So then God
lets Satan afflict Job. All of his children are killed, his livestock is stolen
or killed, and many of his servants were put to death. He loses his family and
his wealth, and when he still does not curse God, his own body becomes
afflicted with painful sores all over his body. He is now at his lowest, a
broken man.
My favorite
part of the story is how his friends react to his situation at first:
“When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the
Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come
upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and
sympathize with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they
could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes
and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for
seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how
great his suffering was.” (Job 2:11-13)
Of course,
after this they go on to criticize him saying he must’ve done something to
deserve God’s punishment, but initially they did the right thing. They
comforted their friend in his time of suffering. Further, they suffered with
him. They wept and tore their clothes. They sat with him for seven days without
talking. Simply, they were present with him.
In my own
life, I know how powerful it is to have someone present with you when you are
at your lowest with no hope of recovery. One of the most memorable things one
of my best friends did for me while I was depressed was be there. One day I had
called her crying, and she said she would go over to my house right away. I
told her I wasn’t home and wouldn’t be home for at least an hour. When I got
home, she was already there waiting for me.
She later
told me that she didn’t know how to help me when I was depressed. She didn’t
know what to do or say. But the fact that she had been waiting for me to get
home, that there was a loving face there to greet me, was all I needed. She was
the friend who sat silently sad with me during times when there was nothing to
say.
People
bring us comfort, but what about God? How can He comfort us? Sometimes I feel
like for the Christians who are better at being a Christian than me, they feel
His presence and are comforted by that. But I don’t have that. In fact, I can
say I’ve only truly felt Him one time in my life and He did comfort me.
In high
school, my junior year was a rough one. I had lost access to all the people in
my life who made me feel loved, and I was living with my two uncles who were
often cold. I knew they loved me, but they weren’t exactly the comforting type.
One night after a horrible practice where all I wanted was to go home and talk
to my mom about it, I realized that wasn’t a possibility. I came home to my
uncle’s house instead and went straight to my room to cry. I knew there were
people who loved me, but I didn’t feel it. No one was available to physically
bring me comfort, to talk to me, to hold me, to listen.
It was at
this point that I was praying to God about not feeling loved that I had a
vision of a rainbow with Autumn leaves falling down. I felt washed with what I
can now say is the Holy Spirit. It’s the only time I’m sure God spoke to me. He
said, “I have loved you since before your parents even knew you existed. I love
you now. And I will always love you.” After that I felt a peace I had never
known before. I felt comforted.
To be
completely truthful though, I now wonder where that feeling was every time
since then I’ve needed God’s comfort. I’ve only experienced it that one time. I’m
not sure if it never appeared again because my need wasn’t as great or because
I was simply more distant from God. I’m not sure, but the Holy Spirit has never
comforted me in that way ever since.
In the
article, “How God Offers Comfort,” it says there are four methods God comforts
people – the Bible, the Holy Spirit, prayer, and fellow Christians (which I’m
just going to change to people in general).
I’m not the
kind of person who has ever found comfort in the Bible, but I know others who
have. I believe some women in my church group have, and I know my mom was
comforted through scripture in her lowest moment, even though she is a woman
who never willingly reads the Bible and does not declare herself a Christian.
Since I am
a Christian, I do like to believe that our God is the “God of all comfort” as
it says in 2 Corinthians. I can’t personally attest that He does this all the
time or every time we ask, but the one thing I do believe is that the way he
sends us comfort the most is through bringing other people to us. He created us
for connections and relationships, with Him and with others. I believe the best
thing we can do in our lives is touch the lives of others.
That’s why
I like the full context of these verses:
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our
troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we
ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings
of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it
is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort,
which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And
our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our
sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-7)
So is God enough when we need comfort? I think He sends us enough.
Sources:
4 Ways to Find Comfort in God, Despite Pain
Brene Brown on Empathy
How God Offers Comfort
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