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Comfort


                He named him Noah and said, “He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed. (Genesis 5:29)

          I thought it would be nice to see what the Bible says about comfort, because I could use some. The first place the word is used is in today’s passage. For about a thousand years (if I remember correctly) the world had suffered under the curse God had put on the land. When people in the Old Testament named people with such a prophetic statement, it usually meant that the name being given means what they are talking about. Noah means comfort, rest. He lived five hundred years before God brought comfort and rest to the world through the global disaster of the flood. He warned people. The ark might have been able to hold more people. More arks could have been built. Scripture has shown more than once that if people turn from their evil, God even withdraws the punishment He pronounces. No one could be bothered to listen until it was too late.
          I need to stop for a moment here, because there’s a piece of the puzzle that needs to be introduced before we lose our way. Comfort doesn’t mean someone patting your shoulder and saying, “There, there… it will be alllll right.” Comfort comes from two Latin words. The first, “com” means “with” or sometimes it is used to intensify the next term. “Fort” means “strength.” Noah, then, was not meant to make things “all better” but to strengthen us or to come alongside us so that the work is not all in our own strength. 
          Comfort isn’t needed when things are going well. It’s needed when life gets tough and you don’t have what it takes to make it on your own. When the disaster is about to fall, or has already taken place, that’s when we need comfort. My mind has pulled off one of its curious leaps. When some people need comfort, they turn to Southern Comfort – whiskey, and it provides Dutch courage, the sort of courage induced by an intoxicant. I’m not looking for that sort of comfort, but there is a connection between comfort (with strength) and courage (heart-i-ness.)
          I pray for you, and for me, that today will be a day of comfort and courage in the midst of whatever disaster you face, large or small. Sometimes, that comfort only comes when we go through the flood, and, in fact, the flood brings it about. It was after the flood that the curse was removed and I think that by the flood that the curse was removed.

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