The God of All Comfort

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. 2 CORINTHIANS 1:3–4

With The God of All Comfort, published in 1906 when she was in her seventies, Hannah Whitall Smith turned from man’s side of the life of faith to God’s. The early book had asked, how do I trust? The later book asks, what is He like, that I may trust Him?

It begins with a rebuke she never forgot. An agnostic she was trying to win told her politely that if Christians wanted unbelievers to take their religion seriously, they had better look more comfortable in it themselves. The Christians he met seemed to carry their religion as a man carries a headache: he does not want to lose his head, but it is very uncomfortable to have it. She admitted, after some years, that he was largely right, and she wrote the book to find out why.

Under-believed

Her answer came in a borrowed sentence she loved to repeat. Has the kingdom of God been over-advertised, the writer asked, “or has it simply been under-believed?” The trouble is not that God has promised more comfort than He gives. The trouble is that we do not believe Him, and we do not believe Him because we do not know what He is like. We picture an angry judge watching for faults, a hard taskmaster, or a distant sovereign absorbed in his own affairs — and who could be comfortable with any of those?

So the book sets out to show what God is, not in theological definitions but in real life. And it lays down the same order she had taught for thirty years: “God’s order is simple: believe first, then feel.” Comfort comes through believing what God has said about Himself.

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. ISAIAH 40:1

The Lord is my shepherd

One of her first answers is the oldest and plainest: He is a shepherd. She tells how the Twenty-third Psalm, familiar to her from the nursery, came alive. At a critical moment of her life she badly needed comfort and could not lay her hands on a Bible. The only text that came to mind was The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. She turned from it almost with scorn: such a common text could hardly do her any good. But nothing else would come. So she began repeating it to herself — and suddenly it was lit from within, and such floods of comfort poured over her that she felt she could never have a trouble again. When she could reach a Bible, she built what she called a pyramid of promises about the Lord as Shepherd, until she was convinced that in taking the name He had taken on the duties that go with it.

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. JOHN 10:11

Her argument then becomes very simple. Imagine two flocks meeting after a hard winter, one healthy, the other starved and sickly. The healthy sheep would not boast of their own cleverness; they would praise their shepherd. And the wretched flock would not blame themselves; they would say their shepherd had failed them. Yet in our spiritual lives we reverse it. When we are thin and anxious and unfed, we say the fault is ours — we are too weak, too foolish. But weakness and foolishness are exactly what sheep are. That is why they need a shepherd. Their safety has never depended on their strength.

I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: EZEKIEL 34:16

The Lord, through Ezekiel, condemned the bad shepherds of Israel for failing to strengthen the weak, heal the sick and seek the lost — and then promised to do all of it Himself. So, Hannah argues, if a sheep of Christ is starving, there are only two explanations. Either the Shepherd is unfaithful, or the sheep has not trusted Him. No Christian would dare to say the first.

She quotes a friend who confessed that for years she had said the Lord was her shepherd and lived as though she were the shepherd and He the sheep — anxious that if she did not keep a tight hold on Him, He would wander off. Hannah’s counsel was characteristically plain: face what a good shepherd must be and do, face the fact that the Lord is such a shepherd, and then say with all the determination you can gather: “The Lord is my Shepherd. He is. He is. No matter what I feel, He says He is, and He is.” Say it again with the stress on each word in turn until every word has yielded its meaning.

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. ISAIAH 40:11

This does not mean that outward troubles vanish. The Shepherd may lead through a desert, and the valley of the shadow is in the same psalm as the still waters.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. PSALM 23:4

A Father with a mother’s heart

Christ, she says, revealed God above all as Father. But she insists that the name must be understood as our best instincts understand it. A harsh or neglectful father is not a good father at all, and God, being good, must be the best of fathers. Even His other titles — Judge, King, Lawgiver — are held within the Fatherhood: He is a Father-Judge, a Father-King.

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. PSALM 103:13–14

And she went further. God is also pictured in Scripture with a mother’s tenderness, and the God who made mothers cannot be less loving than they are. To understand Him, gather together the best of every father and mother you have known, and know that it is only a faint shadow of Him.

As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. ISAIAH 66:13

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. ISAIAH 49:15

She knew what she was saying. She had been a mother seven times and had buried four children. When she writes that mothers would feel insulted to be suspected of forgetting their children, she writes from inside the experience.

The Lord is good

Another chapter tells of the hour she first saw that God was really good — not religiously good, in some pious sense she could not understand, but good in the plain sense in which He commands us to be good. “I shall never forget the hour when I first discovered that God was really good.” To be good is to do the best one knows. God knows everything; therefore He always does what is truly best.

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? MATTHEW 7:11

She applied it with a housekeeping picture. When a friend known to be a good housekeeper turns her house upside down at spring cleaning, we do not doubt her; we know it will be better when she has finished. So when the world seemed to her all wrong, she would say, “It is not my housekeeping, but it is the Lord’s,” and since He is good, His housekeeping must be good too. And when someone asked a wise Christian whether the world did not look like a wreck, the reply was yes — like the wreck of a bursting seed.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. JOHN 12:24

Looking away from self

One reason Christians are uncomfortable, she believed, is that they spend their lives examining themselves: am I earnest enough, have I repented enough, do I feel what I should? Scripture calls us to look at Christ, and “we see what we look at, and cannot see what we look away from.” She took as a motto a line from Adelaide Procter: “For every one look at self, take ten looks at Christ.” Later she thought it better to take no looks at self at all.

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. HEBREWS 12:2

Two cautions

Here she overstates. She claims only two texts in the Bible speak of self-examination; there are others, and honest self-searching before God is part of repentance.

Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD. LAMENTATIONS 3:40

But notice the direction of that verse: search, and turn to the Lord. What Hannah rightly attacked was examination that never turns — the morbid, endless inspection of our own feelings that makes self the centre of religion.

She also argues that our misery dishonours the Shepherd, since the world judges a shepherd by the look of his flock. There is truth in it, as her agnostic saw. But the argument can be turned into a burden, as though Christians must look contented at all costs for the sake of the reputation of God. The sheep in Psalm 23 walks through the dark valley with its fear honestly named and conquered, not hidden. The best testimony to the Shepherd is not a performance of happiness but a real trust that holds in the dark — and a comfort received that is passed on to others in their trouble.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. PSALM 23:6

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Would an unbeliever who watched your life conclude that your faith comforts you or burdens you?

2. Say Psalm 23:1 slowly four times, stressing a different word each time. Which word do you most need?

3. Where have you been acting as the shepherd and treating the Lord as the sheep you must keep hold of?

4. Gather the best qualities of the fathers and mothers you have known. Now say: God is better than this.

5. When the world or your own life looks wrecked this week, say: it is not my housekeeping, but the Lord’s.

6. Comfort someone this week with the comfort God has given you.

A PRAYER

God of all comfort, I have carried my religion like a headache, and I am sorry.

You are my Shepherd. You are. No matter what I feel, You say You are, and You are. I am weak and foolish, as sheep are; feed me, lead me, and carry me when I cannot walk.

Thank You that You are a Father who pities His children and, like a mother, cannot forget. Where Your housekeeping looks like ruin to me, let me trust the Housekeeper.

Turn my eyes from myself to You, and make me a comfort to others in their trouble. Amen.