Comfort does not mean troubles are eliminated, it means you will receive all the help, strength, encouragement, and hope you need to face the troubles and pain of today.
Comfort. It’s all around you. You can stay at a “Comfort Inn.” Sleep on a “Comfort Bed.” Enjoy “Southern Comfort.” Feel safe in your “Comfort Zone.” Pig out with “Comfort Food.” Ride your bike on a “Comfort Seat.” Yet, when you need comfort the most, like in times of grief and sadness, comfort can be difficult to find…that by the way is called “Cold Comfort.”
In the search for comfort, many times we try to find it in the most unusual places or from the most unlikely sources. Many grieving souls attempt to find comfort by keeping busy. They wake early and are off and running, keeping their cars a hummin’ and their feet a movin’. When the day ends and there is no place to run, they crash from exhaustion. The next day their pursuit of comfort begins again and so does the mad cycle. While these busy bees sometimes accomplish a lot, it doesn’t take long until they fray around the edges, fall to pieces and stay in the hive with little buzz left to survive.
In the search for comfort, others try to buy it. I once knew a woman who spent nearly every day in search of the best blouse, skirt, shoes, purse and accessories, all in a feeble attempt to comfort herself. Like a pacifier, the charge card was her way to self-sooth her broken, comfort challenged heart. Unfortunately, she looked good, but inside she was falling a part.
For some, the search for comfort finds them swallowing drugs or nursing a bottle. It starts with just a little “pick me up” that eventually spins hopelessly out of control. Before they know it, not only can they not find comfort, but they can’t find their family, friends, jobs…life. Everything familiar becomes obscured in the hollow, drunken or drug induced stupor. The goal of comfort becomes lost in the need to have one more drink or pill to pull them up to just feeling bad.
In our pursuit of comfort, we will find ourselves “comfortless” if we chose any of these familiar, sometimes alluring ways. Perhaps then our pursuit of comfort needs to start at the source. Maybe we need to go to the place where all the comfort in the world can be found. Where’s that place? Let’s look.
In the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, Paul starts his letter this way saying, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort” (1:3, emphasis mine). Did you hear that? God is not the God of a little comfort. He is not the God of some of the comfort. Nor is God the God of most of the comfort. Our God is the God of ALL the comfort. The whole amount. The whole kit and caboodle. The entire enchilada. The whole ball of wax.
When we are in need of comfort, we need to start at the top. We need to go to the place where it all originates. For it is at the top that we find “every good and perfect gift” and these kinds of gifts comes from the unchanging, distributor…our Heavenly Father (James 1:17). Go to the top and when you get there all you need to do is ask and you will get generously all the comfort that you need.
But understand this. When you ask, you will receive and you will be blessed with all the comfort you need. But, that does not mean that your problems will simply all vanish. Comfort does not mean troubles are eliminated, it means you will receive all the help, strength, encouragement, and hope you need to face the troubles and pain of today.
And what about tomorrow? Well, a new supply will be lavished on you. What if the help you need today is more than you needed yesterday? Then, you will get more. Will God ever run out of comfort? No way! Will God ever tire of pouring His comfort out on your life? He can’t because our passage says he’s also a God of compassion. That means it is within his DNA to alleviate our “discomfort.”
The beginning place is simply ask God, who gives generously to those who love him, to unleash his comfort for your life. And then watch out…God will begin to dispense his comfort.
God dispenses his comfort in our lives. But in the meantime…start asking your Father for the gift of HIS comfort. AMEN!
