et lux tenebris lucent

Comfort. It’s a word with a million meanings. One could be referring to a mattress ad, or the difference between a third-world and a first-world country, or the privilege of wearing shoes, or that state of being we all dangerously assume we deserve. In fact, this shallow meaning is last on the list of definitions given by Webster in his masterful 1828 dictionary. We have cheapened the term to the point where we can ignore Isaiah’s words, so laden with meaning.

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

Perhaps other definitions more truthfully capture the meaning of this laden sentence: “Relief from pain. . . the word signifies properly new strength, or animation; and relief from pain is often the effect of strength. . . the ease and quiet which is experienced when pain, trouble, agitation or affliction ceases. . . it implies also pleasurable sensations derived from hope. . . consolation. ‘Let me alone, that I may take comfort a little.’ Job 10; ‘Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. Matt 9.’”

Unlike many others, I have had the privilege and blessing of growing up in a safe, godly home. Grace can seem familiar, almost natural sometimes. Yet the more I come to know the depravity of my own heart and am faced with the effects of the fall all around me, the more I come to realize that grace really is the unnatural thing. It’s Hosea marrying a prostitute, then retrieving her when she left, then buying her back when she abandoned him a third time. It’s a rebellious nation coming back from exile. It’s the jealous outrage of God over the sin of His bride, and the unwarranted passion of His continued pursuit. This God can’t stop loving His own. It’s embedded in His nature. From all eternity, the Triune God engaged in mutual love, fellowship, joy. That love overflowed to humanity—even in the face of rebellion.

Of course it’s not that He needs us, contrary to what all the contemporary “Jesus-is-my-girlfriend” songs seem to indicate. No, He can do just fine without us. After all, He flicked the stars into place, suspended the planets in orbit, watches over the beetles and snails, cares for the deer, and knows all about the mountain goat. Which is why theologians came up with the term aseity to describe this Being.

So why us? For the same reason He created anything at all. Scripture is clear, Yahweh gets glory from the righteous and the wicked. He delights in the righteous, and takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but His name is lifted high above them all.

The Genesis 3:15 battle plan wasn’t the germ stage of an emergency operation crafted by a confused deity. No, this was the opening declaration of mercy to those unlovely. This immutable God would stay just, but He would also become the Justifier. Exactly how this would happen was anyone’s guess. Peter gives us a small glimpse into what this meant for Old Testament believers:

“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.”

I doubt we can even imagine. To hope against hope. To believe the unseen. We think our faith under trials is something impressive, but we forget that we’re at the end of the story. The ending has already been told. The King is on His throne, and He’s given His people the earnest of their eternal inheritance in glory. What must it have been like for those who had only the character of God on which to hang their hopes?

“For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”

It’s all tied together—more than I ever dreamed. For as hopeless as this world is, Christ holds out the only answer. He is the answer. And this message doesn’t just stay on the page or in the four walls of a church or locked into the month of December. This message breaks down walls and changes lives. It doesn’t come with all the thrilling glory of Olympic medalists, or the sweeping power of a revolution. It’s far more like the church on the Indian reservation we visited last weekend, with rows of squirming, black-haired girls and boys. Any one of them had experienced more pain, betrayal, and loss in their lives than I ever have or will, even though I’d lived for twice as long as most of them. The bereavement was written all over their faces—bereavement of hope, of life, of love. . . of personhood. Because sin never frees, it only enslaves, and communities of people always wound and bind each other. It’s the way of men after that first Adam.

And that’s where this comfort thing comes in. I haven’t lived through half the horrors that many people have, I haven’t ever seen the deprivation under which most of the world exists, I haven’t ever felt the debilitating fear into which some people were born. But I have seen into my own heart, with all its sickness of pride, selfishness, doubt, and rebellion. I have lived through hurt, through uncertainty, through betrayal. I live among people straining to walk the straight and narrow way though stumbling and falling often; and also some who have fallen off the path itself. I know solutions can’t be cheap. I know the truth must answer to the deepest places of need if it can ever truly set free. It must face down the most vulnerable, terrifying, resistant corners of the human heart, or else it’s no better than a Band-Aid over a cancerous tumor. Or a mattress. We don’t really need it, and it won’t really last.

If there’s one thing we need as humans, it is that which will last. Forgiveness, hope, peace, joy, love—if any of these are temporary, they’re insufficient. That’s where the world runs out of answers; where we run out of answers. We can’t fix anything, come down to it. We can’t control our tongues, our actions, our thoughts, let alone help others or change the world. All the brokenness and violence and soul-hunger are natural to us as humanity. The image of God within us and that distant memory of what once was, capacity for fellowship with God—these things haunt us and make the rottenness unbearable. We either hope against hope that there’s something better on the other side, or we believe that we deserve something better and become angry that the Clockmaker doesn’t give us better treatment. When we realize that it’s wholeness and health that are unwarranted, inexplicable, it changes everything.

All the peaceful places, the strong places, the whole places—He stands as the meaning behind them all. Without Him, youths shall faint and grow weary, and young men shall fall exhausted. Without Him, tomorrow is bleak and broken, and relationships have no prospect of restoration. The ache in our hearts will never go away—ever.

Which is where the next two definitions of comfort in the 1828 come in:

“Support; consolation under calamity, distress or danger. ‘Let thy merciful kindness be for my comfort. Ps. 119.’ That which gives strength or support in distress, difficulty, danger, or infirmity.”

It’s not just the absence of everything wrong in the world—it’s the making right of these things. Light out of darkness. Restoration from exile. Reversal of alienation. He doesn’t flee from our brokenness, He gets inside it, under our skin. He invades our hearts in the vulnerable, wretched places we don’t want anyone seeing, much less touching. That baby we read about in the opening verses of the New Testament, He was actually born into this universe where all sad things are true, all fears real, all sickness deadly.  And He came with an answer.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

If there is nothing to eat, if loved ones are taken, “when all around our soul gives way”—we will either hunger for Christ and long for the glories of that city to come, or we will die. Of course, hate and bitterness can keep us alive, but we will die inside. We will lose all feeling, all warmth. We can insulate ourselves from hurt, but in so doing we will also shut ourselves off from truly living, loving-  from all feeling.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

The cross is after all the only way through this world if we are to retain our humanity—to regain our humanity, that is. The entire chapter of Romans 8 outlines this restoration in terms hardly believable if we take the time to actually think about what is written there. Through Him alone who loved us we can be more than conquerors amid danger, perils, and foes. Not only that, but nothing can separate us from Him—not the law, not our weakness, not persecutions, not even our own hearts.

In the midst of danger and terror and pain and sorrow and heartbreak—He provides the victory so that He who created us for His glory might be magnified. When His children go through trial growing in their joy in Christ, He is magnified. Not only are we conquerors, we are more than conquerors because all sad and terrible things can cause us to delight more intensely in Christ. Those who set their trust in a faithful Father will never be ashamed.

He will swallow up death forever;

and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,

and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,

for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day,

“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.

This is the Lord; we have waited for him;

let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

When all the wrong things in the world cause us to despair, when we wonder if the good will ever triumph, when the wicked seem to always win and the righteous are hard set on every side, let us echo the Psalmist:

But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God;

Habakkuk cried out to God in the midst of inexplicable catastrophe; the pain and suffering inflicted on God’s own people by a heathen nation. How can such a thing be? Job’s mouth overflowed with questions that ran straight to the core of his being. Sometimes the twisted fallenness of everything leaves us wondering what happened to the gentleness and goodness of God. Yet we forget His jealous love in the face of our own sin and stubbornness.

How can I give you up, O Ephraim?

How can I hand you over, O Israel?

How can I make you like Admah?

How can I treat you like Zeboiim?

My heart recoils within me;

my compassion grows warm and tender.

I will not execute my burning anger;

I will not again destroy Ephraim;

for I am God and not a man,

the Holy One in your midst,

and I will not come in wrath.

When we run God pursues, and rather than giving us over to ourselves, He gives us Himself. In painfully human form.

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

and cry to her

that her warfare is ended,

that her iniquity is pardoned,

that she has received from the Lord's hand

double for all her sins.

Our eyes have been opened, our hearts unstopped.  His Spirit brings us to a place of surrender and trust—a place we could never have arrived on ourselves.

Then Job answered the Lord and said:

“I know that you can do all things,

and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’

Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

‘Hear, and I will speak;

I will question you, and you make it known to me.’

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

but now my eye sees you;

therefore I despise myself,

and repent in dust and ashes.”

We are small creatures. Yet a King has set His love on us.

God and sinners reconciled. . .

He cannot abide sin, so He came to abide with us that He might take away our filth and replace it with His righteousness.

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,

hail th’incarnate Deity!

Pleased as man with man to dwell,

Jesus, our Emmanuel.

And this is how it all ends for the children of God. We mourn on this earth, yet we live with the certainty that one day all things will be made right, and Emmanuel—God with us—will come again and we will dwell together in perfect, unmarred fellowship.

The sun shall be no more

your light by day,

nor for brightness shall the moon

give you light;

but the Lord will be your everlasting light,

and your God will be your glory.

Your sun shall no more go down,

nor your moon withdraw itself;

for the Lord will be your everlasting light,

and your days of mourning shall be ended.

 Your people shall all be righteous;

they shall possess the land forever,

the branch of my planting, the work of my hands,

that I might be glorified.

The beauty stands stunning, glorious, far surpassing the sorrows of this passing age. A breath—then pleasures forevermore.

“Hail, the heav’n born Prince of Peace!

Hail, the Sun of Righteousness!

Light and life to all He brings,

ris’n with healing in His wings:

Mild He lays His glory by,

 born that man no more may die;

Born to raise the sons of earth;

Born to give them second birth.

We celebrate on Christmas what the prophets agonized over, wondered at, and endured in hope and faith to one day enjoy.

Come, Desire of nations, come!

Fix in us Thy humble home;

Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring seed,

Bruise in us the serpent’s head;

Adam’s likeness now efface,

Stamp thine image in it’s place:

Second Adam from above, reinstate us in Thy love.