Store Up Comfort

Comfort, comfort, my people, says your God (Isaiah 40:1).

God does not comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters.
--John Henry Jowett

Store up comfort. This was the prophet's mission. The world is full of comfortless hearts, and to make you sufficient for this lofty ministry, you must be trained. And your training is costly in the extreme; for, to render it perfect, you too must pass through the same afflictions as are wringing countless hearts of tears and blood. Thus, your own life becomes the hospital ward where you art taught the Divine art of comfort. You are wounded, that in the binding up of your wounds by the Great Physician, you may learn how to render first aid to the wounded everywhere. Do you wonder why you are passing through some special sorrow? Wait till ten years have passed, and you will find many others afflicted as you are. You will tell them how you have suffered and have been comforted; then as the tale is unfolded, and the anodynes applied which once your God wrapped around you, in the eager look and the gleam of hope that shall chase the shadow of despair across the soul, you will know why you were afflicted, and bless God for the discipline that stored your life with such a fund of experience and helpfulness.

Adapted from today's Streams in the Desert
Accompanying photo: The Good Samariatn, David Teniers the Younger (Flemish, Antwerp, 1610-1690 Brussels.