Comfort in the Storm

 

In today’s Grace Note, I want to talk about Comfort in the Storm

I am thinking these days about what kind of comfort we can receive and give in this pandemic.

The recent words of the Pope struck me deeply. “We find ourselves afraid and lost”, he said. “Like the disciples in the Gospel we were caught off guard by an unexpected, turbulent storm.” He said that this pandemic has made us realize more than ever that “we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented.”

Then he spoke of how each of us has a contribution to make—and how one of these is in “comforting each other.” That thought that we can all do this, “comfort one another”, struck a deep chord in me.

Most of the biblical words of comfort arise out of a moment of dire conditions. As the prophet of the Exile in Isaiah 40 heard this call from God: “Comfort, comfort ye my people.” “Speak tenderly” to them, God said, and tell them that their ordeal will come to an end.”

In John’s gospel Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit as Comforter and the word he uses is Paraclete, which means literally “to be called alongside”. I pray we can experience in this present storm the “along-sideness” of God. This is what the early followers experienced in Jesus when they called him Immanuel, God-with-us.

As Paul opened his second letter to the Corinthians he used the same comfort/paraclete word five times in one sentence. It is the “God of all comfort” he says, 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.” Comfort given and received and given on!

There are words of false comfort around us, including preachers’ words, maybe mine as well. The prophet Jeremiah warned in his day of those who say easy words in time of calamity, who say “Peace, peace where there is no peace.” So there are the platitudes that leave us feeling worse. And there are words that minimize the size of the storm, words of comfort which take little account of the reality of these days. But there is real comfort to be found and real comfort we can give in the midst of the storm. There is much we can do to help those in our families and communities. We are seeing the heroic efforts of many in the face of this emergency, many at the risk of their lives and to the edge of their endurance.

We, the Pope said, can all make our contribution—and this is one of them: to comfort those around us, to stand “along-side” them, even if not physically so. Offer love, speak tenderly, listen deeply, engage in caring action.

In the old preacher story, a mother is comforting her child in bed at night who is scared. After awhile the mother rises to leave and her child begs, “Don’t leave.” The mother pats her on the back and says, “God will be with you.” The girl said, “Yeh, but I want someone with skin on!”

You can be comfort with skin-on, even if not now skin-on-skin.

I pray these days, you will be able to feel the comfort of God, and that you can pass it on to those around you.

I close with a benediction I have often used, adapted from the benediction of William Sloane Coffin:

May the Lord bless and keep you
May the Lord make his face
to shine upon you and be gracious to you.
May God give you the grace never to sell yourself short;
the grace to risk something big for something good,
the grace to remember
that the world is too dangerous
for anything but truth,
and too small for anything but love.

So may God take you minds
and think through them.
May God take your lips
and speak through them.
May God take you hearts
And set them on fire.
Amen