The God of All Comfort
Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 8:10AM MAD21 By MAD21
There are so many people I know that are in the midst of healing in one form or another. Whether it's from a death of a loved one, a life-threatening diagnosis, abuse, depression, neglect... it's all around us. Have you noticed?
Even if you are living the life of your dreams, you will still have days that come crashing down around you. You know the kind. When you heart just literally aches. Someone hurts your feelings, you have a bad day at work, something you were looking forward to gets cancelled. Couple all of this with the compassion you may feel for your friends or family going through some serious hardship. It makes for a very emotionally draining time.
My friend Sarah let me re-post one of her older articles called: "Love Songs" this week. In it she talks of a day when she stopped after coming home from work to look at the beauty around her and heard the voice of God singing to her heart. I think all of us need to do that more often... Stop. I know I don't do it often enough.
He is singing to all of us, you know. All we need to do is stop what we are doing, and... listen. He is waiting for us to allow him to comfort us. Go. Run to him. He is waiting just as a parent waits for their child, to pour his love out all over you.
"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 have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows." (2 Corinthians 1:3-5)
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." (Matthew 5:4)
MAD21
On my way to drop my daughter off at school this morning, this song came on the radio. It's called, "Praise You in this Storm" sung by Casting Crowns. I know I already included a video with this post, but I encourage you to also listen to this song as it is just as powerful. Praise be to God! He will find us all in the storm.
Reader Comments (7)
Thank you for the encouragement, Ginny.
I've been writing a lot about waiting on God lately. It hit me while reading this that it's so silly to anxious and upset while we wait for Him if we just think about how long and often He waits for us. Thanks for the wonderful post, Ginny.
Great post Ginny. Another angle on that is I think we often assume people are better off than they actually are. Everyone does a pretty good job of masking their hurts so if we want to genuinely love people it takes some effort to get to where they can be vulnerable with us.
Thanks for the comments. It's nice to know that my words have meaning to people other than the ones living in my head :o)
Matt--SO true. Especially online. It's easy to create and hide behind a facade in our blogs, FaceBook, Twitter, etc. and not truly show others how we are really dealing with life. It's easy to make it seem like we have it all together.
Thank goodness we have a God who is bigger than all of this.
Ginny, I know exactly what you're saying (and what Sarah was saying too... and the commenters-LOL)... and I LOVE both of those songs! They are always comforting during the storms of life.
Rejoice always, and again I say rejoice! How hard it can be to praise Him when we're in the midst of trouble, but in that offering of praise we can find such sweet relief!
Amen to "stopping" for a time each day to listen and to praise.
Thanks, Ginny