WHEN this world passes away, and the realm of glory shall come in, more than one beautiful thing will be gone for ever. There shall no more be known either the beauty of compassion and of mercy, or the beauty of sympathy and of comfort.
To comfort one is a beautiful thing; even in that which is less serious. A little girl, who dropped her doll, so that its head brake in two, and now sobs and cries, arouses simultaneously your smile and your pity; but something beautiful, something holy enters upon the scene of childlife, when presently you see how the little one in her despair by her mother is caressed and comforted.
And this beauty of comfort gains in value as the grief wounded the more deeply, and the comforting caress gives place to a comforting by the eye tender with pity and the reassuring word coming up deep from the soul.
So God comforted Adam, when trembling he fled from God, and the Lord called to him, saying: “Adam, where art thou?”
This is the first step in comforting, that one calls to himself him that is desolate in his grief, or as though called by his grief one goes himself to him.
Pain, sorrow, grief creates a sense of forsakenness, of loneliness, of being thrown back upon oneself; and therefore the first thing he who cries needs, is that there is someone who will take an interest in him, who will break his forsakenness, who will comfort him, who will make him feel that he is not left as a prey to his grief. In bitter grief it is even good when one does not remain standing alongside or over against you, but gently puts his arm around your neck, draws you towards him, and makes your battle-worn head rest against his breast.
Therefore, in the language in which St. John wrote, the Comforter is called the Paraclete, that is he who has been called in to one in trouble; and to comfort in that language means: to call one to you.1
As Ishmael lay in the wilderness, even without being able to speak, and it reads: “God heard the voice of the lad” (Gen. 21:17), so there goes out from every sorrow a voice that calls for pity, for sympathy, for compassion, and he who so allows himself to be called, because he understands the dumb language of distress, is the Comforter.
Hence the word of Isaiah 40: 1: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, your God shall say. Speak ye comfortably to the heart of Jerusalem” (Dutch version).
This began already before the Flood. Lamech called the name of his son Noah, for, so he prophesied: “This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed” (Gen. 5: 29).
That was so then, that is so now, and this shall be to the end the ever-welling spring of our grief. Sin, the curse, the misery of life. Misery all about us, and misery in our heart.
And this is the distressing part of it, that this grief becomes the more poignant as the sensitiveness of our feeling increases; increases after the measure of your higher spiritual estate; and reaches its highest when you are of the people of God; yea, that this grief has never been felt more deeply and been suffered longer than by the Finisher of our faith.
Him comforted in Gethsemane not the disciples, but the angels of God.
And with Him His people suffer, and among that people the prophet more than ordinary believers, the witness more than he that remains standing afar off, the more deeply initiated more dreadfully than he who glides along the surface.
That is called Zion. “Zion” is that part of God’s people that enters most deeply into the things of the Lord. And therefore says the prophet, that “God Himself shall comfort His Zion”.
Children of the world have their trials and disappointments, but they get away from them, they allow themselves to be diverted. And above all, they do not have the stream of the world against them, but drift along with it. It seems at times as though prosperity is their portion. Already Asaph said (Psalm 73: 5), “They are not plagued like other men.”
But day by day God’s people drink from the cup of affliction, and in addition to this, with them it is always rowing against the stream, there is never an end to their struggles against the world, and they know sorrows of soul, to which the world remains foreign and then suffer for the sake of God and of the name of the Lord, as no child of the world can suffer.
And therefore there is always a voice of complaint crying out of Zion unto God for comforting, and in response the voice from heaven keeps calling: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.”
God’s people always suffer this sorrow. Zion suffers for the sake of Zion. There are evils abroad in the church of God. There is opposition to the Name of the Lord. There is a falling away among the brethren. There is a feeling at times as though everything were giving way under our foot. Till even an outbreak of sin among the brethren comes to distress us. Brothers grieve us more deeply than the enemy can make us afraid.
And this is not thought of, and this does not concern him who is busy alone with himself.
But devout children of God, they who are Zion, feel it, O, so deeply, and theirs is a suffering as once the prophets endured.
And that suffering, that suffering of His Zion God knows, and therefore He continues to apportion comfort to His Zion.
“Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God!”
In a small circle, for a short time, there was superabounding comfort, which made sorrow to be forgotten.
My disciples, said Jesus Himself, do not fast so long as the Bridegroom is with them. They who could handle the Word of life, were past the sorrow of God’s people. But, as Jesus additionally declared, when the Bridegroom shall have been taken away from them, the darkness in their soul shall be the more awful. Then would their heart be troubled.
But so it could not remain. Therefore said Jesus to them: “Let not your heart be troubled, I will send you another Comforter.” And then came God the Holy Ghost.
The deep thought in this is, that the comforting of men is too shallow, and the comforting of angels falls too short, and the real comforting of God’s people only comes when God Himself comes to comfort His Zion.
So He came in the Son, and comforted the disciples. And so He came now in the Holy Ghost, and comforted the church.
And when you ask whether in earlier days God Himself had not comforted His people, the answer runs: “O, surely, but as from afar and from on high, and not close at hand.”
And this is the New Testament, that now the Comforter comforts no more from afar, but comes to His people, and dwells among them.
This was the rejoicing of the disciples when Jesus was with them: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
And this same is now the praise-psalm of God’s people. The Holy Ghost has been poured out, has come close to us, and has chosen our heart to be His dwelling-place.
Say to the daughter of Zion: “Behold your God.”
And now the fountain of Comfort flows eternally, and now the people of the Lord dare to face their sorrow, because as one that is comforted of his mother, with holy devotion in the midst of their sorrow they triumph.
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Footnotes
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To this the objection was raised, that it does not read Paracletor, but Paracletus. But this is not valid. Even without voice sorrow calls, and in that sense the comforter is always the one who is called in to help. ↩