Injustice Persists Where Hopelessness Prevails

We’ve been thinkin about comfort this week. It can be too easy to think of comfort as merely a personal thing. And while private consolation is a significant theme in Scripture, the comfort that we’ve seen so far in Isaiah has been entirely communal. It’s something we share in together.

And on top of that, there’s an aspect of the comfort that’s oriented towards justice. As Bryan Stevenson has said, “Injustice persists where hopelessness prevails” - because we lose our motivation to change the world when we lose ourselves in grief. When we live too long without experiencing comfort ourselves, it becomes increasingly probably we’ll give up working for justice in our world. That’s why it’s so important to read scripture with the lens of Jesus who said,

Freely you have received; freely give. Matthew 10:8

There’s a sense in which we are comforted so that we can find hope for ourselves to keep going on the journey with Jesus, joining him in the renewal of all things. Or as the apostle Paul put it, God “comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” (2 Corinthians 1:4).

Yes, we each need comfort from God for our sorrows, our losses, and the injustices we have faced. And without guilt, we’re invited then to tap into that deep well of goodness to be a part of God’s renewal of this beloved world.

is there a place you’ve received comfort of late? Do you have a sense of where you might reinvest that comfort in others?