“He comforts us in all our troubles, so that we in turn may be able

to comfort others in any troubles of theirs and to share with them

 the consolation we ourselves receive from God.”

(II Corinthians 1:4 (N.E.B.)

I’m sure you have heard of the dear old lady who said to her pastor at the close of a Sunday morning service, “That was such a comforting sermon.” “And just what,” asked the minister, “was there in my message that brought comfort to you?” “Oh,” she said, “I got such comfort out of that blessed word, Mesopotamia.”

Surely for most of us it takes more than a pious pronunciation of “Mesopotamia” to impart comfort to our souls, but like the old lady what most of us need and want from our religion is comfort. If one of those numerous nationwide polls were made to determine what people want most from their religion, undoubtedly, the carefully tabulated results would show that the vast majority seek, first of all, comfort. For it is not just the sick and the suffering, the aged and dying, who yearn for comfort and persistently look for it.

One minister, who was also a journalist writing a syndicated newspaper column, and who received a steady stream of letters from his readers telling him of their varying troubles and concerns, said that he had learned from reading these letters that “life is often very hard, even for the very young or the robustly healthy folks.” And he added that perhaps “it is meant to be so, in order to harden what is soft in us, and to soften what is hard.” (Joseph Fort Newton) But be that as it may, all of us, in coming smack up against life, universally encounter, at one time or another, loneliness, defeat, disappointment, despair, fear, anxiety, worry — and many of us need and seek as a tonic for our souls the comfort of religion. How truly Tennyson said: “Never morning wore to evening, but some heart did break.”

But can we get real comfort from our religion, and just how does it come? Is there anything more substantial than the mesmerism or self-hypnotism of the dear old saint who was comforted by the blessed word “Mesopotamia”?

St. Paul affirms in the opening lines of his Second Corinthian letter that “God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulations.” This is a very broad assertion. And just how does this God of all comfort comfort us in all our varied troubles and distresses?

Well, first of all, our Christian religion assures us that God knows just what we are up against — that He understands. That’s the beginning of His comfort for our troubled souls. Our word “comfort” comes from the Latin “con-fortis”, literally meaning “brave together”. The first qualification of any comforter is that he be one who will stand beside us, stay with us, in whatever stormy wind blows a gale across our life and brave it with us — understanding through the experience of comradeship just what we are up against. And that comforts the human soul.

My old professor, Dr. Emil Kraeling, in his splendid book on Job where he discusses the good qualities and the failings of Job’s comforters, includes this poem of his own composing to describe the ideal comforter:

O give me a friend in the hour of need,

Just one instead of three,

Who will sit at my side a day and a night

To calm and comfort me.

Let him be none of those of superior type

Unmoved by weakness or fright.

Let him know what it means to sway and moan

Like a wind lashed pine at night.

Let him hold my hand with a living grasp

And the strength of his heart pass to mine

May the light of his eyes be my guiding star

And his voice my anodyne.

And if at the turn from night to dawn

I am called and at last set free,

Let me mount the twin steeds of his faith and his hope

And ride forth to eternity.

And isn’t this just what our God has done for us in Christ, and more? That is the meaning of the incarnation — “Immanuel” — “God with us”. “The word became flesh and dwelt among us.” As the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews so poignantly put it — “For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” He knows our burdens, our temptations and sorrows. He knows the heartbreak of betrayal by friends, the bitterness of rejected love, the disappointment of broken hopes, the despair of having one’s best motives misunderstood.

So with authority Jesus of Nazareth can say to you and me those comforting words: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” And He can and does because He knows, He understands, what we are up against. In the Book of Revelation the living Christ says to the discouraged, persecuted and hard-pressed Christians of the seven churches in Asia, to comfort and encourage them: “I know what you are up against. I know the ridicule of the pagans, the temptations; but I also know your plucky struggle, your loyalty.”

At the close of a busy day, a faithful Christian woman was so tired and spent she could muster strength for but one brief, feeble petition in her evening prayer. Falling on her knees she sighed: “Oh God, I’m tired.” And she rose comforted, for she knew He knew and understood.

And then our God of all comfort is able to comfort us, each one, in all our distresses and anxieties because He impresses on us the unchangeable fact of our worth and dearness to Him. What can be more corrosive of courage, more conducive to despair in the human heart, than the feeling that no one cares? Why keep up the struggle, for win or lose, fight clean or dirty, who cares? And if we go down in the fray, finished, so soon no one will remember. So why hold out, what difference does it make anyway? Throw in the sponge and quit.

This is the despair wrought in the human heart by that distressing ratio of the many set over against the one. What can I, one person with my small dreams and hopes and fears, count for among the earth’s billions of people?

But over against this cold, human arithmetical ratio Jesus sets the parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep and the lost son, to reveal the comforting concern of Omnipotent Love — that God is not like man in diminishing the value of each unit as the total number of units increases. It belongs to the properties of omnipotence to love each soul with an omnipotent love, as though each were all and all were each. For the Good Shepherd of our souls, though He have ninety and nine sheep safe in the fold, and one lone sheep be lost and in danger, He leaves the ninety-nine to seek the lost till it is found. Such is the worth and dearness of each one of us to our Heavenly Father. And His assurance that this is so, given in the scriptures and in our souls, comforts us.

But farther even than this our God goes to comfort us: not only does He give us the consoling assurance that He understands what we are up against in life’s struggle; not only does He encourage us with the Savior’s warrant in word and in blood that we are of precious value to Him, but He actively moves to rescue us in the mad scramble that is this life.

Writing to the Corinthian Christians, St. Paul mentions a recent calamity which befell him in Asia, a great danger which pressed him down so that he despaired of his life. What the trouble was the Apostle doesn’t say, whether a serious illness or an attack by enemies we don’t know. He just mentions its genuine grievousness — that he felt as though he were under sentence of sure death. There was no hope for deliverance through his own strength and efforts. But, says Paul, he put his trust in God who is able to raise the dead, and God did deliver him. And of that deliverance Paul wrote: “He rescued me from so terrible a death, He rescues me still, and I rely upon Him for the hope that He will continue to rescue me.” (II Corinthians 1:10 — Moffatt translation)

St. Paul says that is one way our God of all comfort comforts him in the difficult present and in helping him face courageously the unknown, uncertain future. As the intrepid missionary traveler looked back across his life experiences he saw dangers and difficulties aplenty, and disaster that chilled his soul for the moment; but it was not these which had the center of his attention. For Paul saw God standing there, always present in every experience, always amazingly sufficient to support him or to open up a way of escape. And it was the vision of that Rescuing God, in all his past hazardous way, which imparted comfort and poise and courage to the Apostle Paul, in whatever predicament he found himself. “He rescued me from so terrible a death, He rescues me still, and I rely upon Him for the hope that He will continue to rescue me.”

Yes, these are some of the ways our God, the Father of mercies, comforts us. This is the how of His comfort, but do we know the why? Are we aware of why He should comfort us? Oh, we say, because He loves us. That is one reason, of course. But St. Paul says that there is another sure purpose for His comforting us. Listen: “That we may be able to comfort others who are in any trouble, by the same comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” It is not the purpose of God that we should sop up selfishly the gracious comfort supplied our souls, but that having been comforted we should comfort others “with the same comfort,” mind you — “the same comfort wherewith we are ourselves comforted of God.”

From all the Christian fronts today there come to us indisputable facts to prove that the whole human race is fighting a fiendishly desperate enemy — despair; that people are perishing close at hand and far away for lack of that comfort which comes of the assurance that someone, somewhere, understands and cares.

“Friends,” said Job to his mock comforters, “Friends should be kind to a despairing man or he may give up faith in the eternal.” The surest proof of the existence of a loving Heavenly Father to despairing people is the positive evidence of kindly, Christian concern.

Yes, we are comforted of our God at this moment in our lives for the express purpose that we may be able to comfort others with the self-same comfort wherewith we are comforted — and we cannot completely comfort unless we follow the divine pattern and act ourselves to effect a rescue.

So while life lasts for us and we come and receive the copious comfort of our God, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, let us remember that God has this purpose in comforting us — “That we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted by God.”

As Dr. Johnson wrote to his friend Taylor on the last Easter Monday of his life: “In the meantime, let us be kind to one another.”