God Is My Certain Comfort

Photo by Mitchell Hartley on Unsplash

All of us are wired to seek comfort. We often don’t realize it, but we all set up our own ways to cope with pain, stress, or overwhelm. It’s a good and normal part of being human, part of being a dependent creature. But this can be easy to forget when we feel let down by our comforts of choice. Feeling that place of need, feeling the reality that no matter how good the thing, it can never comfort us forever, can become a source of great frustration.

But what if we learned instead how to lean on God for this built-in need? To thank him for the places where we are reminded that all of the comforts of the world, honorable or not, are only ways to learn more deeply of the all-satisfying comfort that can only come from God himself? Even the sweetest gifts were never intended to replace the Giver, but only to bend us towards him, to better behold more facets of his shimmering kindness.

Let’s spend some time with a few examples of common comforts, and seek to find our solid footing beneath them, the truth from God-breathed Scripture that truly and really bears us up and soothes us into rest.

One of the most obvious and sudden places we run when we need relief is often our smartphones. So many of our brains have become addicted to the numbness we feel when we’re scrolling on cruise control, the information fix we’ve wired ourselves to grab for. It’s a way we tuck ourselves away from life’s noise and attempt to calm ourselves, or perhaps it’s a way we seek to feel in control for a moment when everything else is swirling out of our reach.

This is me—I start to feel overstimulated, so I grab my phone and do what my brain thinks will help, but actually only drains me further. There is always a wise way to use these comforts, these blessings and curses in one. But if we don’t operate out of self-awareness and care for our souls, we will never be nourished by it. We will be driven and controlled by it.

The truth that is enough to free me from this addiction is the same truth that the Psalmist ran to with his own troubles: “This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life… When I think of your rules from of old, I take comfort, O Lord.” (Psalm 119:50, 52, ESV) The thoughts and character and law of God have come down to us, in the clear pages of the Bible, and in the clear face of Christ.

We don’t need to swallow down the opinions of our favorite influencers or public figures when we find ourselves turned around and tangled in our confusing world. We don’t need the immediate gratification of social media likes or pressing “Order Now” on that item we’ve had in our cart for weeks.

The sustenance we’re scrambling for when we grab our phones is ultimately only going to be found in everlasting, steady truth. And it is a filling, lasting, warming meal for our whole being, that Word of the Lord that will never pass away. It is a real comfort you can build your life upon, it will not ever fall out from under you.

Another common comfort we seek is money. So often, I hinge my level of peace on the amount that we readily possess. This must be a false comfort I nurse rather preciously, because we have returned time and again to hard places of financial need, where God has taken my wringing hands in his own and said “I am your provider,” and then proceeded to fill us with all that is needed and more.

It can become so easy to worry over what will be left after all of our purchases this week and after the next bill cycle. I feel the need to have enough financial cushion available before I allow myself to breathe. Not only that, but I also often feel that my husband must have the same care and habits as I do, or he’s not being a good provider.

I do all of this unhelpful striving, instead of receiving what is given with grateful, open hands, and trusting God to care for our family through it. And trusting my husband as a follower of Christ to steward our gifts well, in the way God leads him. He has the Holy Spirit, and I remember and rejoice that it is not me.

Money was never meant to be our true security or our ultimate wealth. It is and always will be a shabby savior. Instead, it is the Lord himself who “lifts the needy from the ash heap” (Psalm 113:7) and who “comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden.”

Money and possessions are kind gifts from his hand, bestowed so that we can hold them loosely in a thankful hand and not grasp them with our demanding fists. He is the one who makes, keeps, feeds, lifts up, and restores to his people “the years that the locust has eaten.” (Joel 2:25) He is the giver of certain and true comfort, which will come in its completeness soon, and is ready for us to know even now.

Just like anything else we run to for comfort, the sweet gift of human relationship is aglow with the promise of rest and shelter. And I cannot stress enough the importance of close community with people we love and trust. It is a means by which God cares for us, and assures us of his certain presence with us. When I realize I am being truly seen, welcomed, helped, taught, and everything else we need from other people, I learn more deeply about the nearness of God and his delight in me.

Yet without running through these comforting loved ones to the “God of all comfort” himself (2 Corinthians 1:3), even everything good I have in my community will not be enough (and it is deeply, assuringly good). Because no person besides Christ can actually say, “I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him.” (Isaiah 57:18) He is the only one with “gracious and comforting words” (Zechariah 1:13)—words that he often speaks to me through the people beside me.

But he is the source, he is the one who is “closer than a brother.” (Proverbs 18:24) He is the only one whose comforts can never disappoint us or change. Instead, they endure and satisfy. They cover sin and speak mercy. In our triune God is perfect, unbroken belonging, union, and communion.

We are certainly free to enjoy these and countless other comforts, in the wide grace of God who is happy to give us things to enjoy. So keep savoring your morning cup of hot, spicy tea. Take delight in your afternoon nap or your morning workout or your day out thrifting.

But let us remember that the sweetest pillows of rest for our weary heads are only sweet because God himself is our true comfort. As we reach for more of the things that comfort us for a short while now, let us be reaching for more of him. As we find moments of rest in the kind gifts that he gives, let us learn how much more certain is his comfort for us, lasting beyond and beneath all things.