TRAINED TO COMFORT

 

TRAINED TO COMFORT Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Isaiah 40:1 Store up comfort. This was the prophet’s mission. The world is full of comfortless hearts, and before you can be sufficient for this lofty ministry, you must be trained. And your training is costly; for, to render it perfect, you too must pass through the same afflictions as are wringing countless hearts of tears and blood. Thus your own life becomes the hospital ward where you are taught the Divine art of comfort. You are wounded, that in the binding up of your wounds by the Great Physician, you are learning how to provide first aid to the wounded everywhere. Do you wonder why you are passing through some special sorrow? Wait until five years are passed, and you will encounter many others who are afflicted as you were. You will tell them how you have suffered and have been comforted by our loving God. Then as the tale is unfolded, and the anodynes applied which once your God wrapped around you, you will know why you were afflicted. You will see it in the gleam of hope in the eyes of another hurting soul. And then you will bless God for the discipline that stored your life with such a fund of experience and helpfulness. Blessed be 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 have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows... for your comfort and salvation. 2 Corinthians 1:3-6 God does not comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters. — Dr. John Henry Jowett From Streams in the Desert, updated.