Since retirement, I have been using a little devotional guide by Charles Ringma called, “Seize the Day with Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”  Each day has a short quote from Bonhoeffer, a Bible verse, and a reflection by Ringma. I intend to use this little devotional guide for the first year of my “post-Advent Presbyterian Church” life. The devotional is very different than the devotional life I had as a pastor. Thus far, I am enjoying doing something a bit different devotionally. I don’t know how long this will last, but I am enjoying it and intend to finish my year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

This week, one of the devotions had to do with our human tendency to seek God’s actual presence only when we have exhausted all human avenues to accomplish something we desire to accomplish. All of us, pastors and non-pastors, have a tendency to call on God and seek God most passionately when all else fails. Ringma reminds us that, “God is not not a god of the gaps when we have run out of human resources or explanations. God is not be called on only when human wisdom fails. He is not waiting in the wings to be called on only when things run into difficulty. He is there at the center–central to our wisdom, to our answers, to our very life. His wisdom is not geared for a life of religious escapism. It is sufficiently comprehensive to embrace family and political life, personal faith and social transformation.”

This morning, as has become our custom, we attended two different churches. In one of them, the pastor was talking about the false God’s we rely upon a lot of the time. One of them, partially responsible for some of our social tensions is the “God of My Tribe,” that racially and socially acceptable God that defends MY PEOPLE. There are a lot of false God’s in our culture. Perhaps most importantly, the God of MY Personal Peace. This is the God of wealth, health, perpetual youth, and personal fulfillment.  This is the God of pleasure, of security, and of affluence. There is no such God. It is an idol we have created in our own minds–and like all false gods, it must surely fail us and our culture.

The text for this morning’s sermon at one of our churches was from Second Corinthians. It reads like this,“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.  For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.” II Corinthians 1:3-7).

Over and over again, Paul talks about “comfort.” To the modern ear to talk about “a God of comfort”  seems to mean that God is a God who makes us comfortable, at ease, without problems. This misunderstands what Paul is saying. The Latin word that we translates “Comfort” is made up of two words that mean, “To come beside and strengthen.” This puts an entirely different perspective on what Paul means. What Paul is saying is that God is the God who comes beside us to strengthen us so that we can face difficulties, aging, loss of vigor, disease, loss of jobs, of meaning, even of life itself. The ONE TRUE GOD is not a god who allows us to escape life, but the ONE TRUE GOD who comes beside us and strengthens us for this life. This God is always with us, in life and in death, and in every circumstance in between.

In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God came close to the human condition and suffered with and for us all that we can suffer: injustice, betrayal, disease, death. In Christ and in the resurrection, God demonstrated his power over our circumstances. Sometimes he will deliver us from them when we cry out to him. Sometimes, he simply walks with us through them.

Bonhoeffer knew such comfort. He was not delivered from the Nazi’s. They ultimately killed him. But he had a powerful understanding that God was with him in his circumstances empowering him to face them. Those around him at the end understood this and remarked on his remarkable calm in the face of suffering, injustice and death.

Amen.