True Comfort and Encouragement

I've been thinking a bit about what real comfort and encouragement look like. Moving swiftly past the temptation to imagine a large glass of nice red wine or a bar of dark chocolate. There is probably nothing tremendously new or earth-shattering in what I'm about to say, but hey, the thoughts are running through my head at the moment, so why not get them down.

Let me give an example from myself of how this can be sometimes complicated. I do the type of job where it is often difficult to know how well you're doing and so many things outside of my control can affect things. Sometimes this leaves me feeling like I'm completely useless, I'm doing no good and so on. At those times, what I think I need is reassurance that I'm doing well, that I'm making a difference. And its very easy for friends to buy into that as well and offer me that
reassurance, which appears to work. I end up feeling all warm and cosy and comforted ... until the next time something goes wrong and I go back to square one. The root problem, you see, maybe isn't work going badly, but that I derive too much of my sense of self-worth, value and significance from what I do. And what I really need to know is not that I'm doing a good job, but rather that even if I'm not, it would be OK - that I would still matter, that God would still be there for me.

The film Reign Over Me (see my earlier post) raised interesting questions about the best way to help somebody - on the one hand, trying to force somebody into things, even for their own good, is seldom a strategy that seldom turns out well. On the other hand, what people need and what they think they need aren't always the same. Platitudes will sail well wide of the mark and, whilst God can use scripture powerfully in some cases, biblical "sticking-plasters" often just don't do it. However, there is something incredibly powerful about someone who understands and stands alongside in the midst of difficulty. Job's comforters did a far better job when they just sat with him and wept than when they opened their mouths! Maybe loneliness is at its most acute not when we are alone, but when we are going through hard times and lack somebody to understand and stand with us. I don't think thats the whole story for comfort and encouragement, but maybe it should be the starting point.