| Garden of the Heart |
Chapter 17 |
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We need great wisdom for the ministry of comfort. Some who have it in their hearts to be comforters of others altogether fail in their efforts. Job’s friends, when they had learned of his trouble, came to sympathize with him. But, instead of comforting him, they made his trouble only the harder to bear by their ill advised words, telling him that his afflictions were in punishment of his sins, and pitying him because he was enduring sore divine judgments. We can sympathize with him when he cried: “Miserable comforters are ye all!”
We need to make sure that we understand God’s way of giving comfort. This is beautifully illustrated in the message in Isaiah, “Comfort ye My people, saith your God.” These two little possessive pronouns are wonderfully suggestive – “my” and “your”; “My people,” “your God.” The people were in exile, but they were still God’s people. He had not cast them off, though they had sinned. Could any other comfort mean more to our hearts than to know that God calls us His children? Yet that is our comfort in every hour of suffering, in every sorrow we have to bear. This was the comfort which came to Jesus Himself on the cross. In the darkness He lost sight of God’s face for a time. It seemed as though He was forsaken. But in the desolate blackness about Him He still knew that God was His – “My God! My God!” He cried. In the darkness of any sorrow the friends of Christ may always say this. To God’s word, “My people,” they may answer back, “My God.”
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