PATIENCE AND COMFORT
by Vladimir Moss
That we through the patience and comfort of the Scripures might have hope.
Romans 15.4.
From Adam and Eve in Genesis to the Wedding of the Lamb in Revelation the whole of the Holy Scriptures is a story – a very long story – of patience and comfort. Men have had to wait, suffering in patience, for a long, long time, before they receive the final comfort, relief, deliverance from sorrow and ultimate joy. Adam and Eve waited for nearly five thousand years in hades after their fall from God before Christ delivered them through His descent to their sorrowful abode. The Israelites waited for four hundred years in slavery in Egypt until God sent a deliverer in the form of Moses, and then another forty years in wandering through the desert before they entered the Promised Land. Again, they were seventy years in captivity in Babylon before Zerubbabel led them back to Jerusalem. All the righteous of the Old Testament waited in patience for the Coming of the Messiah. All we Christians of the New Testament are waiting in patience for His Second Coming in glory, when we, like Him, will be clothed in new, glorious bodies of the resurrection. Then not only we, but the whole of creation, will be comforted. “For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8.19).
So, learning from the Scriptures, we must learn to wait. In patience and in hope. Not only in our own personal lives, for our deliverance from our personal sorrows and illnesses. But also, and more fundamentally, in the Church. The tragedy is that many of us do not see beyond our personal sorrows. We do not long for the deliverance of the Church from her present profound sorrow and tribulation. We do not even feel it in a small way. For rarely – in the opinion of some, never – has the Church been in such distress, so near to extinction.
But, someone will rebuke me, the Church will prevail over the gates of hades! True, very true. And that Scripture must be our comfort. But do we see the gates of hades? Do we see how close they are to destroying us?
The strength of our comfort, of our hope in the Scriptures is in direct proportion to the depth of our immersion in the life of the Church and its present sorrow and patience.
July 29 / August 11, 2024.
