Daily Manna · Day 234 · August 22
Comfort Like a Mother
“As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”
Grown people still want to be held, and most of us are embarrassed about wanting it.
I am one of them. We are the ones other people call when things fall apart, and we handle things. Underneath all the handling is a want we would not admit to anybody, because it sounds like a child's want and we are forty-eight years old.
God reaches for the most physical picture there is and uses it of Himself: "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." He used a mother's love earlier in Isaiah too. When His people were sure He had forgotten them, He asked, "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?" Then He admitted, "yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee." So He does not claim that mothers never fail. He says He is what a mother is at her best, and He does not fail where mothers do. This chapter is not soft, either, because fire and judgment come only two verses later. And the same verse gives the comfort an address: "ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem." God's comfort is found where He dwells with His people, so the way to it is to come to Him.
So do nothing with this today. Make no plan and no resolution to be more open with people. Sit somewhere quiet for three minutes and let the wanting be there without trying to manage it. Bring it to Him the way a child brings it to a mother, because He has promised to comfort you.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 234 is Nor Bear Any Grudge (Leviticus 19:18).