June 17

“Christ is called our Comforter, but how many of us take a commonsense view of this name and really believe that He will not and does not leave us comfortless?....If anyone should call himself our comforter and then run away and hide himself when storms and trials come, we would think that his name of comforter was merely an empty title, and all his promises of comfort would be like idle tales.”  Hannah Whitall Smith, God is Enough, 6/17

Hannah is absolutely right, so why then do we feel comfortless so many times?  Psychologists would have us believe it’s low self-esteem.  Because we don’t esteem ourselves highly enough we refuse God’s comfort.  We may place the reason for our low self-esteem on our parents or others, but we can't escape the fact that the reason we won't allow God to comfort us is because of our pride.  We want so much to be in control of our own lives we refuse help even when we need it desperately.  Some of us will finally accept help when we get low enough.  Others never do and live what I’ve heard coined a “living death”.  They slowly commit suicide by the choices they make until some actually commit the final act of ending their lives by their own hand.  This “living death” doesn’t have to be as drastic as drug abuse.  It can be just wasting away your life in front of the TV set.  It’s anything we do to try to escape life--from experiencing all it’s meant to be.  We can give all sorts of excuses for not stepping out of our complacency that sound legitimate, but ultimately they all come down to wanting to have control over our lives ourselves.  Let us instead call upon the name of God and receive all that He is able to give us.

“The LORD is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth,” Psalm 145:18