This is a first for me. Grabbing my computer when it is nearly midnight, but I can’t sleep, so I thought maybe I should just write. Write because my heart is exploding with so many emotions. Write because the Spirit has been stirring in me all week and I have to try to take my thoughts and piece them together.
This is one of the hardest posts I have ever written because I know exactly what I want to say, but I do not know how to say it. I am just trusting that the Holy Spirit will show up like God’s word promises in Romans 8, intervene, and paint words onto this page.
This past week, as most of you know, there was a tragic accident where four UGA students lost their lives, and one is still in critical condition. I did not personally know these girls, but all week long I have been a mess. My heart has been so heavy for their families and friends. I did not know them, but hearing about their lives and how they lived has inspired and challenged me all week long.
Earlier this week a ministry out in Texas found me on Instragram and reached out about me writing a piece for their yearly advent book they put out every year. I happily agreed, and they sent me an email with the details and assigned me a word that they wanted my post to focus on: comforter.
What is a comforter? What does it mean to comfort someone? How does Jesus possess the quality of being a comforter? All questions that skipped through my mind throughout this week.
“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.” 1 Corinthians 1:3-5
Paul lays it out for us. It is not will God comfort us? It is not will God show up in our troubles? It is PRAISE be to God who is the God of all comfort. It is PRAISE be to God who comforts us in all of our troubles. You do not praise someone for something they might do. You praise someone for what they have already done.
Another translation says “the father of mercies.” It seems better, however, to take the words more literally, as stating that God is the originator of all mercies, the source from which they flow.
I cried a lot of tears this week, tonight especially. But I think those tears washed away a perspective and gave me a new one, a new awakening. Driving home after church I could not help but think about thirteen almost fourteen years ago when my family stood in the midst of death and looking at where we are now and seeing not just the faithfulness of God but the comfort. I wish I could say that in the middle of the hard times I was aware of all that the Lord was doing but I wasn’t. I am now learning that there is beauty in being honest. There is beauty in being real with a world that needs you to be honest with them. There is beauty in saying, “as obvious as it might have been I missed it.”
I did, I missed it. I missed the fact that in the darkest days, God was still the God of all comfort. I missed the fact that in the sea of grief, God was still the originator of all mercies. We pray for Him to be those things to us. We pray for God to be a comforter, we pray for Him to bring mercies, but He already is. I knew this is who He was but my circumstance blinded me to the truth, just as it so often does to us.
Paul says “praise be to Him.” He was the God of all comfort all those years ago when Paul wrote this letter to the church of God in Corinth. He was the God of all comfort thirteen years ago when my dad died. He was the God of all comfort in some of my darkest days. Today, He is still the God of all comfort.
We pray for Him to be something, and Paul says we should just praise Him because He already is. He is already everything we need Him to be.
By watching the community of UGA this week rally together, I am seeing how they are taking Paul’s words, “God who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God,” and applying them. In old English, the word comfort can be used as a noun or a verb, but in both cases there is an implied meaning of “strengthen.” That is exactly what those students are doing. I read about the prayer nights and the worship songs people are singing all around campus. They are strengthening their campus by proclaiming Jesus. They are strengthening each other by speaking out the hope we have in Him. They are comforting.
But more than that, Agnes Kim, Kayla Canedo, Brittany Feldman, Christina Semeria, and Halle Scott are all comforting us because every single one of them is strengthening us. Strengthening us because their lives proclaimed Jesus, pointed to Him, and are still pointing us to Him.
It is a chain of events. God comforts us. We comfort others. But this only happens by realizing, understanding, and seeing Jesus is a God who comforts, not just sometimes but all the time.
I miss it sometimes. I miss being able to see how the Lord was the God of comfort then just as He is now. But I will never miss it again. Instead I’ll praise Him. Because yesterday, today, and tomorrow He will never change. I have tasted and seen the God of comfort and now I can go be comfort to someone else.
No circumstances get to blind us from the truth anymore. Tears don’t just have to cloud our vision, but they can instead be the very thing that make us see clearly. It is the truths we stamp on our hearts day in and day out that become the foundation we stand on when things are falling apart.
Remind yourself as often as you need: He is a God of comfort.
Remind yourself so that you don’t ever miss it.
To Agnes Kim, Kayla Canedo, Brittany Feldman, Christina Semeria, and Halle Scott:
Thank you. Thank you for giving me eyes to see something I have needed to see for a long time. Thank you for living in such a way you were/are able to teach me something although we never met.
Heaven will be a more crowded place because of these girls, but heaven can be even more crowded because of you. Ask Jesus for the eyes to see Him for who He is, and for eyes to be able to see Him as who He is even in the darkest days. Then go and proclaim it.
Friends, take heart. You do not have to ask for Him to be a comforter, He already is. Praise Him.
