| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 9 |
Page 4 |
That is very beautiful. Mother love is God coming to us in an incarnation which even infancy soon learns to understand. What the mother is to her baby, God is to His child unto the end. The Scriptures strive continually to make the truth of the divine nearness real to us. We are taught to call God our Father, but there is something about the mother’s relation to her child which is even closer and tenderer than a father’s. So when God is seeking most earnestly to make His people understand the tenderness of His love and yearning for them, He says, “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.”
“No word of all the Scripture
Thrills a sweeter chord than this,
Stirs a richer retrospection
Of the souls experience bliss.
Than this promise, where the Spirit strengthens weak and
Timid faith
With assurance of His comfort, ‘As a mother comforteth.’”
Jesus went straight to His Father with all His troubles. He was not content with any logic of comfort, or any promise of divine good in the final outworking of events. He believed all this, but in His trial He wanted the blessing of His Father’s presence, the warmth of the Father’s embrace. Continually we find Him fleeing away from the throng, from hatred and persecution, to commune with God. In the hour of His extremist sorrow, while He sought also human sympathy, it was to His Father that He turned for real comfort. “Being in an agony He prayed.” Our Master’s example should be our guide in ever experience of grief or trial.
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