Comfort, Comfort Ye My People

When I was a child, anticipating bedtime brought a crippling fear. I think this began that morning when I was six years old—when my mom woke me up to tell me that my father had a massive heart attack in the night and died on the way to the hospital. It was less than two weeks before Christmas. I wasn’t afraid of the dark or monsters hiding under the bed. I was afraid that while I was sleeping, everything would fall apart and that my mom would die, or maybe even I would too.

I have always been someone who appreciates creature comforts. Our house has been clothed in its Advent attire—dried orange garlands, paper chains and snowflakes, and so many candles it is likely a fire hazard. Keeping it cozy reminds me that there is light in the midst of the literal and metaphorical darkness. My mom did everything she could to ease my bedtime fears and make me comfortable after my father’s passing: she provided me with the comfiest bed sheets; I slept with a stuffed dog my dad had given me; she even went as far to have clouds professionally painted on my ceiling so that it felt magical and light, like the morning sky. I was desperate for comfort, and she was desperate to provide it.

With the passing of time, and lots of therapy, my night-time anxiety lessened, and I was able to fall asleep more easily. But the anxiety caused by trauma never fully leaves; it just manifests in different ways. I struggle to wait well. I don’t know where I first heard this term, but I tend to “awfulize,” thinking that that what I’m waiting on is a worst-case-scenario. Instead of waiting with hope, I often wait with despair.

I imagine I’m not alone in this, and many of you can relate. When you anticipate time with family over the holidays and the reminder of complicated and messy relationships. The cautious look at your bank account after the first round of holiday spending. The passing of time and our bodies deteriorating. Whether or not we realize it, much of waiting is fraught with anxiety.

I chose to write about the Advent hymn, “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People” because I believe all of us need to hear it and sing it as we wait. Instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop, this hymn is a reminder that we wait for God’s comfort. This is the counterintuitive beauty of Advent. It gives us space to feel the weight and darkness of life, but never lets us lose sight of the eternal hope and comfort in Christ’s final coming.

In the first verse, the hymnist quotes Isaiah 40:1-2.

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the Lord's hand
double for all her sins.”

I am struck with how God speaks tenderly to Jerusalem. I tend to feel a weight of guilt for my anxiety and sorrow, battering myself with “shoulds” and higher expectations for myself and my faith. But God doesn’t come to us with demands. He doesn’t extend his comfort to those who have it all together. He comes to those who desperately need it. In our sorrows and our longing, God speaks of a peace that is yet to come, that there is plenty of grace for our sins, and that the war against them is already won.

In the next verse of the song, we see what happens when God’s comfort comes:

She hath suffered many a day/Now her griefs have passed away/ God will change her pining sadness/Into ever-springing gladness.

Our griefs will pass away, but it doesn’t end with that. God transforms our sadness into joy and gladness. He goes as far to undo the pain we’ve experienced and write us a new story—as the Jesus Storybook Bibles ays, “everything sad is coming untrue.”

The song's final verse returns to Isaiah 40 to assure us of God’s comfort.

“Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.”

Life often feels treacherous and confusing. Every decision we make could cause us to take a wrong turn or bring added sorrow. We can sink into a valley of despair and depression and feel like the low places couldn’t be any lower. Circumstances can seem insurmountable, like the highest of peaks. But this verse reminds us that there are no places too low or too high for God’s comfort to not only reach, but make sure and steady.

A question still remains: How will this comfort come to us? It will come in fullness with Jesus’ return, but what about before then? I think 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 helps us understand:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 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.”

What Paul seems to be saying here is that one of the main ways God comforts us is through the hands and feet of his people—the church. So often anxiety creates a subtle greed in us by turning us in upon ourselves. But the grace of God’s comfort is that to fully appreciate it we have to share it, meaning we are turned outside of ourselves.

This means a couple of things. First, this requires us to open up to others with our pain, fears, and longings, allowing them to walk with us as we wait. It takes vulnerability and bravery to share the rough and crooked places we experience with others, but it is how true healing begins. Second, this requires us to share comfort generously, which means that our idols will be challenged. Comforting others will be inconvenient, awkward, and tiring. But Paul is again helpful:

“For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”

Paradoxically, it is in our suffering that Christ’s comfort is most powerfully known, meaning we can pour ourselves out for others in imitation of the one who gave all of himself for us.

I don’t have a ton of vivid memories surrounding the time of my father’s death. What I remember most isn’t the funeral or the actual grief, but the kindness and presence of our neighbors and friends. I remember our next door neighbor coming over in her bathrobe many mornings to have coffee with my mom. My friend’s dad fixed our driveway without asking. My neighbor’s 16-year-old daughter hung out with me to give my mom some much needed time to process—later I learned she never wanted to be paid. Looking back, I see those things as an extension of God’s comfort to my family, even though I didn’t understand it yet. Those people entered into our pain and grief in such a natural way as our neighbors. As we wait in this time between the already and the not yet, let’s do the same.

Comfort, Comfort Ye My People

German text by Johannes Olearius. English translation by Catherine Winkworth.

Comfort, comfort ye my people,
Speak ye peace, thus saith our God;
Comfort those who sit in darkness,
Mourning 'neath their sorrow's load.
Speak ye to Jerusalem
Of the peace that waits for them;
Tell her that her sins I cover,
And her warfare now is over.

Yea, her sins our God will pardon,
Blotting out each dark misdeed;
All that well deserved his anger
He no more will see or heed.
She hath suffered many a day,
Now her griefs have passed away;
God will change her pining sadness
Into ever-springing gladness.

For the herald's voice is crying
In the desert far and near,
Bidding all men to repentance,
Since the kingdom now is here.
O that warning cry obey!
Now prepare for God a way;
Let the valleys rise to meet him,
And the hills bow down to greet him.

Make ye straight what long was crooked,
Make the rougher places plain;
Let your hearts be true and humble,
As befits his holy reign.
For the glory of the Lord
Now o'er earth is shed abroad;
And all flesh shall see the token,
That his word is never broken.