Advent waiting! Comfort is coming!

We live in a world of pain and suffering.  All of this pain and suffering can be traced to one cause: Sin! 

It is often possible to find the cause of pain and suffering in specific sins.  We experience grief, sorrow and anguish when we are hurt by the sins of others or our own sinfulness. People are unkind and uncaring.  Even our dearest and closest friends ignore us, forget us and betray us.  The effects of sin are everywhere.

Yet in a deeper sense our entire existence is in anguish because of sin. St. Paul tells us in Romans 8:18-23 that even creation groans because of sin. Earthquakes, tornadoes, draught and floods all are the result of sin.  It is not that we can trace these things to specific sins that God is punishing but rather they are evidence of how all of creation has been separated from God because of sin coming into the world.

Real comfort comes not so much from bandaging wounds or tender soothing words.  Rather real comfort comes from God Himself in Christ Jesus who is the end of sin through His death on the cross.  Real comfort comes only when we are connected to Christ through His word and sacraments.

This is the comfort that Isaiah is told to proclaim in Isaiah 40.  This is the comfort that is ours in Christ.  This is the comfort that pastors are to proclaim week in and week out from pulpit and altar: forgiveness of sins, life and salvation.

This comfort moved Johann Olearius to write the great Advent hymn based on Isaiah 40, “Comfort, Comfort, Ye My People.”  Johann was the son of a pastor and from an early age learned the love God in Christ Jesus.  He also knew sorrow and grief.  His mother died when he was eleven and his father died when he was twelve.  Becoming an orphan during those critical years must have affected him greatly.  He was drawn to study theology at the University of Wittenberg and became a Lutheran preacher.

How often during his formative years he must have sought comfort in the arms of a loving God.  We can only imagine how deeply he felt the words of this hymn as he penned and sang it. 

As you sing the hymn, think of the comfort of God given to Johann as he thought of his mother and father in the arms of a loving God. Think of how God comforts you in your times of need. Allow the words of comfort spoken to Christ’s Church ring in your ears:

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.

Comfort, Comfort Ye My People, LSB 347

 May ever-springing gladness in Christ be yours throughout this blessed season and always.

Pastor Quardokus