One of the people I treasure deeply asked me if I would blog about this. She is beautiful and truly living uncomfortably, at a new school surrounded with culture she has never really known and with people living far from Christ. It is such a conviction to me because I tend to voluntarily displace myself but then go back to where I am comfortable. To live in discomfort is different.. The beauty of discomfort is that in it there is an intimacy with Christ we cannot know otherwise because we depend on him so much when we are uncomfortable.
I’ve always seen scripture as valuable but lately I have realized that it is more beautiful than thunderstorms and oceans and more useful and equipping then years of theology or PhDs or anything else. (Now when I turn to scriptures my first instinct is going to read it as quickly as possible and suck the knowledge and value out of it. Its how I read my textbooks, how I do research, how I learn. WE are all taught to learn in this hurried fashion, but if I attack scripture like a gold mine searching for tidbits to put into this blog, I deny what it is. It is living and breathing and a double-edged sword. So the discomfort starts as soon as we open the Word and we linger over it, chewing on it, searching each word, praying over it and through it, dancing and singing it. We can’t try to rush to finish Gods sentence for him. That would just be terrible. And this is the problem with our hurried existence, every moment has to be spent well and be useful and we move so quickly as if wherever we are a waste of time. I am the worst of anyone I know in doing this. When I talk about it, I use my life as an example of the opposite of patience. But God is patient and he will remain faithful.) So 2 Corinthians 1 3-4..
HE is the God of all comfort. All comfort. Which means that every affliction we suffer, he suffers with us, and we can allow ourselves to be deeply embraced in his willingness to suffer with us. Donald Miller talks about Job and how he thinks Job is the reminder that God presents life with only himself to cling to. In suffering and in discomfort, God maybe knows that clinging to him is far more beautiful than not suffering. We never are uncomfortable alone. If we are comfortable, perhaps that should be more worrisome because there was nothing comfortable about the life of Christ or Abraham or Esther or Paul or anyone else. Our natural response to discomfort is to get rid of it as quickly as possible, but God requires that we enter more fully into that discomfort and set up camp there.
And so back in 2nd Corinthians a beautiful stream is developed. God comforts us in all our discomfort so that we may comfort others with the comfort of Christ. Essentially the comfort of Christ flows directly from Christ, through us, upon those who do not know him. Suddenly we find that Jesus was talking about us when he say Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. You and I are the vessel God is using to bring the fullness of his kingdom into a sin-saturated universe.
Dear Love,
I have no words to describe the mystery of Christ and will not act as if I know much about comfort at all. I consistently move out of my own discomfort instead of resting in it. But I really believe God that you want to be all my comfort, to satisfy all my hunger, to love me in my pain and loneliness and groaning. And I think God that somehow you would like to use me to bear the burdens of other people, other beloveds, and to comfort them. Not to abandon them with and I’ll pray for you or tell them they should probably look to Jesus, but be your hands that hold and to cling and be clung to as Peter and John were. I know God that you are intentional about holding my hand and guiding me in and through deep discomfort so that I may walk that path with my brothers and sisters and go through it again with them. They cannot see you, but they can see us, your ambassadors. And you allow us to love them with your love. Which will demand more than I am willing to give, but take it from me. Lord when I look at girls who are hurting, cut me to the heart with the realization that I have to die to myself and my pride and my comfort that they may live. No matter what they think of you. Jesus, I keep running from my own discomfort, but you will ask me to go where I would rather not go. And that is beautiful.
Krystal
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