Comfort, comfort my people,
    says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
    that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.

In 2 Corinthians 1:3-7 Paul writes:

 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 6 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. 7 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.

Clearly, Paul knew a very real God who could, and did, give very real comfort. He was regularly in need of it, and he knew its reality.

If God speaks, it happens. His Word is His work. If He speaks ”Comfort” over, or into, a situation, there will be comfort. People will be comforted. He may even use us to bring the comforting word.

It’s interesting that ”Speak tenderly” literally means ‘speak to the heart.’ Oh how wonderful it is when God’s love is ‘shed abroad’ in our hearts, so that we not only believe He loves us, but we actually feel His strong embrace, by the Holy Spirit.

As I began to meditate on these two beautiful verses, I got a picture in my mind of a very naughty child, who has been severely disciplined, but who is now sitting on the parent’s knee, enfolded in loving arms and feeling a father’s, or mother’s, tenderness.

This passage is about Judah and Jerusalem. God’s people had endured long years of chastening through their Babylonian exile. But it was about to come to an end. The Lord wanted them to know they were loved and forgiven. There is no comfort like that of realising all our sins have been forgiven by Almighty God. (By the way, there is no sense here of earning salvation, just the assurance that Jerusalem’s sentence has already been more than served.)

Now, in these New Testament days, we understand in a deeper, richer, fuller way that our ”sin has been paid for” by Jesus. This puts a new song into our hearts and upon our lips:

‘My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought,

My sin not in part, but the whole,

Is nailed to His Cross and I bear it no more.

Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, O my soul.’

(See Psalm 32:1-5).

PRAYER: Maybe you have someone on your mind today, and you realise it would be good to pray that God will speak His comfort into their situation? Why not take time to do this. Maybe even let them know, if appropriate?