“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God” (Isaiah 40:1).
As I listen to seminary students, pastoral, organizational leaders, and everyday folks in grocery stores, mechanic shops, assembly lines, and postal services – people are feeling overwhelmed.
I know those moments when it truly feels like we are drowning. I can just feel the tension in the space between my shoulder blades. I also have experienced the nauseated feeling that reminded me of how I forgot to care for myself by not eating or sleeping enough.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we allow these afflictions to happen to one another?
The writer of Isaiah begins with this word: COMFORT. The comfort the Prophet shares is the reassurance that God does not leave God’s people. God is with us. We live in a world where difficult things happen every day, where we are all too often overwhelmed. Yet Isaiah reminds us that we serve a God who brings COMFORT, a God who desires for us to care for ourselves and one another.
This message is excerpted from “Advent reflections on being overwhelmed” by Jen Collins in the December 2022 Café online magazine.
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