Don’t know why I couldn’t have figured out that going down a flight of cement stairs with untied shoelaces was a bad idea. I guess at age 6 you don’t know everything yet. So, emerging with several goose egg bumps on my head, I needed comfort. Thankfully, my mother was there. She knew what had happened, she cared (probably in pain herself), and most of all, she was there. With me. To comfort me in her arms.
Since then, I have learned to tie my shoes, and also learned that comfort is not the removal of pain, but it is knowing that everything is going to be all right. For some strange reason, pain is not so bad when someone is there to hold us.
Most people experience some level of pain, stress, anxiety, or discomfort in life. I often wonder why God allows pain knowing that He is quite capable of removing it. Is it possible that there is something ultimately better than being out of pain?? The good news is that we don’t have to understand it all. In fact, He never tells us to figure things out. Wow. He does, however, frequently tell us to trust Him. Hmmmm. To draw close to Him, the God of all comfort.
As I say in the book Goodbye for Now, comfort is not the removal of pain,
but it is knowing that with the Lord everything is going to be all right.
Recently struggling with a very perplexing question in my life, I came across Psalms 142-145 (written by a man who knew well the pain and trauma and fears of life.) At the heart of my frustration (okay, meltdown) was the complaint that no one understood what I was going through. The feeling of aloneness was agonizing. Thankfully in my case there are precious people who care very much; but even then no other person can personally experience and share the depths of your own pain. With One exception. In reading these Psalms, three facts came leaping off the page:
He knows. He cares. He is here.
Realizing that the God of all comfort, Jesus the One Who died for me, knows: I can relax. He cares: I can rest. He is here: I can lean on Him as He wraps me in His everlasting arms.
Everything is going to be all right.
