Advent Day 23 God of all mercies
2 Corinthians 1:2-5
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
God of All Comfort
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 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. 5For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
Ephesians 3:14-19
Prayer for Spiritual Strength
14For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
A French theologian named John Calvin once reminded us of this shocking statement. “Peace should be found no where except for in the agony of Christ our Savior.” It’s an alarming sentence because we are taught to never find peace in someone else’s pain or misery. And while that is true with each other, for we are called to mourn with each other, it is not the way we relate to Christ. With Jesus we look at his agony because like smelling salts it awakens us to God’s great love for us. His agony shows us that he took on all of our sin not just some or part of our sin. He didn’t just take a beating rather our sin fully put him to death so that our sins are fully put to death.
So God is the Father of mercies and comfort. During this Christmas season many people are down and depressed. How do we comfort them? How are we to comfort our own souls when we plunge into despair? Not by thinking about how good we are or how bad we are. Our comfort is in seeing that Christ has tasted sufferings with and for us. He was born and grew up in a persecuted times. He literally felt the growing pains of life. He understood family pressure. He knew what it was like to be rejected by popularity and cheated on my friends. He felt the social awkwardness that comes with not living according to the cultural norms. We could go on and on about how Christ feels our sufferings. But most importantly God doesn’t just feel them but takes them on.
Christ didn’t sin but took on our sin 2 Cor. 5:17) for us. He suffered the death we deserve for our sin and the pain of emotional abandonment when he cried “my God, my God why have though forsaken me.” That is what WE should be crying and groaning! But we don’t have to because Christ did. Instead our cry becomes that of the beggar “Son of David, have mercy on me.”
For all of us who can hear grace and peace, not from hallmark, office parties, rich food, mediocre presents and warm lights, but grace and peace from Christ. We share in sufferings so that we may share in comfort. And we kneel before or Father who has the riches of the mercy of Christ. Or as we sing “fall on you knees. O hear the angel voices. O night divine. O night when Christ was born.”
