The God of All Comfort

There's a strange belief I've come across quite a few times in the way the media portrays Christianity, and I think it needs addressing. The portrayal often goes like this: about halfway into a movie, some dashing male character who's lost his also-beautiful wife/female lead is in despair. He looks to Heaven and he wonders "If there is a God, why did this happen?" The scene closes.

I've actually never heard someone ask this in real life, but its prevalence in the media leads me to wonder how many people hold to it as their defense against God. The Bible speaks often of God's comfort, of His deliverance, and if we believe in Him, and it, we must acknowledge that the state of the world seems to contradict this.

But the state of the world is not God's fault. The world we live in is not perfect because we have the free will to make it so. God gave us that freewill, because he wants, not a race of robots, but a human race, that chooses to acknowledge his glory. So, he will not take away the evil state of the world because to do so would be to take away our freewill, but He does promise us two things. In 2 Corinthians chapter 1, there is a passage(in the NIV bible) that is labeled "The God of All Comfort". Verse 5 says "For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows." Here Paul is linking the thing that shows us as Christians to the world(the "sufferings of Christ") with His comfort. Notice how he takes these sufferings for granted. This is not a far-off thing that happens to missionaries who stick their necks out in other countries, but to everyone who accepts Christ. Everyone who accepts Christ accepts the inevitability of suffering, but God promises them comfort that "overflows." Paul goes on to tell the church in Corinth of the "hardships... suffered in the province of Asia" (vs. 8). He says "We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us."



While God does not stop every terrible thing from happening, he does promise to deliver us through the words of Paul. He loves us, and if we love him, and try to follow after him, he will deliver us. And while earthly things may pass away, Paul has this to say on the subject.



"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ-the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." (Phil. 3:7-11)