Sharing in Comfort

Sometimes I think we forget how much we do in our own strength. In our self-sufficient society, it’s so easy to forget.

We don’t think twice about driving to the grocery store to get groceries and make meals, or the fact that we’re even driving and get to fill our car up with gas. Many places around the world don’t have that luxury.

Something else we try to be self-sufficient in is comfort. Whether it’s giving comfort to someone who has experienced a loss, or trying to comfort our own selves, we tend to do it our own way, often with poor or embarrassing results.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-7

Do you notice in the previous passage who is REALLY doing the comforting for us believers? It’s God. He often uses other believers to do it, but ultimately it’s HIM comforting us. And what is the purpose of that comfort? It’s not so we can feel better about ourselves (although that’s a wonderful by-product). It’s specifically so we can comfort others who are “in any affliction”.

Suffering and death is a part of life we like to gloss over and sanitize in the West. It’s the reason why funeral homes exist. We don’t want to deal with dead bodies. But in remote tribal areas, such amenities are not available. Tribal people deal with and bury their own dead. There is no home to send the body to. There are no nice clothes to pick out, or makeup to put on so it looks like they’re sleeping. No, they deal with death in very real and sometimes harsh ways. As non-believers (yet), they don’t have the God of all comfort, comforting them.

When missionaries serve in a tribal context, death is one of the hardest realities they deal with. But as they have been comforted through Christ, so can they in turn offer true comfort to the hurting ones left behind, opening a door to share the Gospel. Years later, when a tiny church has been born, and the first believer dies, what a difference there is as they now rejoice in a believer’s home-going. As they were comforted, they can now comfort the hurting. The truth of 1 Corinthians 15:54-57 now resonates with them,

“When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”