Advent Comfort

Passage for reflection: Isaiah 40: 1 - 11

We need help: we’ve discovered Channel 5 are showing hour after hour of Christmas films during the day and we’ve started recording them! 

Last Sunday, we noticed a film called “A Very Yorkshire Christmas” and we thought it might be nice. It was filmed in Knaresborough last year. I wish I’d read the Radio Times review before starting it: “large amount of schmaltz”! 

Girl gets stuck in Knaresborough! 

Widower struggling to keep park with lodges open.

Girl falls for widower. Can get back home but makes excuses.

It never snows at Christmas.

It snows.

Happy ending. And the mother in law is Frank Spencer’s wife! Ooh Betty. 

This year people as they look forward to Christmas are looking for a happy ending. It’s been a dark and difficult year. So I understand why Christmas trees are being put up this week and lights are being lit on houses and in gardens. But God does not do schmaltz! God comes in Jesus into the world to transform it but he doesn’t wave a magic wand or give us a bottle of sugary sweet medicine, he gives us of himself. He shares our suffering in order to redeem it. He is born in vulnerability and poverty to underline where we find ourselves matters to him. He “lays his glory by and wraps himself in our clay” as Charles Wesley puts it. 

Schmaltz - no. Comfort - yes. 

“Comfort, comfort my people,”
says your God.
“Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and announce to her
that her time of forced labour is over,

her iniquity has been pardoned,
and she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.”

How are we comforted?

Jacob, why do you say,
and, Israel, why do you assert:
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my claim is ignored by my God”?
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the whole earth.
He never becomes faint or weary;
there is no limit to his understanding.
He gives strength to the faint
and strengthens the powerless.

There’s an old story of a preacher beginning his sermon with the introduction that he had been led to speak on the subject of God is Love. “But,” he said,  “I determined that was too broad of a subject, so I begin to think about my subject being just God Is. However, after deciding that subject was still too broad, I have settled on the just the word is.”

We can be comforted that God is God. He is on His throne. He is in control. There is nothing too difficult for Him. He rules! He reigns! He is the beginning and the end! He was, and He is, and He is forever. He existed in eternity past. He came, clothed in humanity, as Jesus, and He is coming again to make all that is wrong right! That’s the Advent promise. 

Here is where we find our comfort! 

I get why the powers that be at Channel 5 decided maybe in the summer to bombard their schedule in these weeks with nicey nice Christmas pap. We need some escapism! But we need something that will last into January and whatever 2021 brings. 

Comfort comes when someone sits alongside us in our distress. Comfort is someone staying with us in our uncertainty. Comfort is knowing even if today feels rough, God is coming soon. Comfort wipes away tears, wipes up mess and puts us back together so we believe we have a future again. In chapter 41 of his prophecy Isaiah gives us the attitude we need if we know we are comforted:

"So do not fear, for I am with you"

If you need a bit of schmaltz this season, that’s fine, watch Channel 5 in the daytime to your heart’s content. We all want a happy ending. But know this: the comfort knowing all will be well only comes from God. Comfort my people. Our hard times are soon to be over. I pray in these Advent weeks we may know that comfort and be that comfort for others.