The God Of All Comfort

May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promises to your servant.

Psalm 119:76 NIV

How often as a child did you stub your toe, bruise a leg, or cut a hand, and, running to the arms of your mother, you sobbed out your pain? Lovingly caressing you and tenderly kissing the hurt, she gave to you her special “healing magic,” and you went your way half-healed and wholly comforted. Love and compassion contain a stronger medicine than all the salves and ointments made by man.

Yes, when a loved one dies it is natural for us to feel a sense of loss and even a deep loneliness. That will not necessarily vanish overnight. But even when we feel the pain of bereavement most intensely, we can also know the gracious and loving presence of Christ most closely. Christ—who suffered alone on the cross, and endured death and hell alone for our salvation—knows what it is to suffer and be lonely. And because He knows, He is able to comfort us by His presence. “May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant” (Psalm 119:76 NIV).

So there can be a blessedness in the midst of mourning. From suffering and bereavement God can work into us new measures of His strength and love.

Our Father and our God, I need Your strength and love to cover me like a comforter, I need to feel Your presence in my heart and mind to dispel my fear and stress. Be with me, Lord, and hold me ever close to You. Through Jesus my Lord. Amen.

Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).