he who comforts you

I, I am he who comforts you;

who are you that you are afraid of man who dies,

of the son of man who is made like grass,

and have forgotten the LORD, your Maker,

who stretched out the heavens

and laid the foundations of the earth…”

Isaiah 51:12-13a

God is comfort. God comforts His people. These words, spoken to a rebellious people who turned from God, only to experience His judgment and justice, were an encouragement to a people still loved by God. His love demanded He do what would be necessary to bring them to a re-commitment to His Covenant. And so He sent Babylon to Jerusalem to take away a generation from Judah. In the ruins of Jerusalem the survivors staggered in fear. And God, through His prophet, brought comfort again. As His people in pain and trial turned to Him again, God would use their deepest failures and pain to rewrite a story of His restoration of them.

Fear takes our eyes off the comforting control of God’s loving and mighty ways. But even in desolation God asks us to take our eyes off the ruined landscape and look to Him. God asks us to stop looking horizontally at what seems hopeless and instead to gaze in faith vertically at our only hope in Him! “I am he who comforts you.” Yes, Lord, You are!

How then does this historical account of God’s restoration of Israel inform our own needs for His consolation today? I don’t think my suffering is due somehow to ways in which I have broken covenant with my God. In fact, as a child of His, reborn in faith in Christ, adopted into God’s family, and heir with Jesus, I believe grace rules over all my experience… even loss! That alone is a huge comforting perspective. God’s comfort is great.

But honestly, I get disappointed by human comfort alone. To this day the least comforting thing people still say to me is something like this: “I can’t imagine what you are going through.” Really? You can’t imagine death and sorrow? No, what you mean is, “I am uncomfortable identifying with your loss. I don’t want to think about me going through the same thing.” Thanks for nothing, O man! Literally. Human inability to comfort aside, God says the exact opposite. God IS comfort. He knows loss because Jesus gave His life. Jesus carried our sorrows on the cross. God knows the pains that people push away. Jesus experienced them. He designed my circumstances and is right beside me in them for His glory and my good. It is God Who comforts the hurting.