Saturday, November 28, 2020
Does Our World Seem Off Kilter?
Especially Then
God Walks with Us
and Comforts Us
with Truth
Isaiah 66:13
As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.
John 14:18-19
‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.
Words of Grace For Today
When we are born, we are helpless infants. We require that someone provide care for us. A mother or replacement nursemaid can nurse us and give us nourishment. Today we have formula that can replace a mother’s milk, or some of it. Immunity cannot be received from formula.
A mother breast feeding a child is called nursing the child, or comforting the child. As demanding as breast feeding at all hours is, as a child grows fathers and mothers spend a good portion of their days providing for the child, well into adolescence so that they survive. Much of this care is comforting a child and good fathers are sometimes better at this than mothers, even good mothers. Fathers, even poor fathers are better at providing comfort than mothers who are a narcissists or a personality disordered persons.
Comfort is good, Fathers can be good, Mothers can be good. And all but the mentally ill can, but do not necessarily, provide comfort.
In our baptisms God adopts us as children. Jesus adopted the disciples as they joined his motley crew that travelled, taught, and healed the crowds of people. When Jesus is about to leave them, after being resurrected from the dead, he promises that he is not abandoning them.
More than enough people are totally messed up due to abandonment issues. Jesus does not do this to the disciples, nor to us. Jesus must leave, but he lives and he lives in and among us, God’s children. Jesus also promises to return.
We still wait, expectantly, for his return.
Advent is a special time when we should practice waiting for the Christ to return as we celebrate his upcoming birth. We jump right into pre-celebrating Christ’s birth and the hoopla of Christmas, all so that we can avoid remembering we still wait for Jesus to return!
We are an impatient people. We suffer greatly because of it. We forego the healing practice of waiting, waiting, and more waiting … with grateful hearts. We wait for Jesus to return, for Christmas to come. We do not claim we ‘possess’ Jesus; like ‘I’ve got Jesus in my heart’ or anywhere else. Jesus has got us, thank God; or there would be no way through even a day of the evil that people make for each other on earth.
Waiting, we remember how Jesus is with us, how Jesus has always got us, and has always gotten us.
That’s the comfort of God. The comfort of God is that God-Jesus-Holy Spirit is with us always, guiding, teaching, leading, healing us.
Parents can comfort us so much, even long after we’ve grown to be adults. As any parent of adult children can tell you, the parenting job does not get easier with time as the children age, rather it gets more complicated, more significant, and it requires wisdom.
Thankfully, with the fear and love of God as our beginning each day, we receive wisdom, slowly and sometimes we think insufficiently for the challenges. Yet God uses us to deliver God’s comfort, to our children, and to all of God’s children.
Comfort, comfort, comfort … we share as we have received: God is with us, Jesus has not abandoned us. Together we CAN wait, also for Christmas.
Perhaps the separation and challenges Covid 19 forces on us will teach us to wait, with patience … and to provide each other the comfort that surpasses all other: God’s comfort for God’s children.