‘They have no comforter’
[Ecclesiastes 4:1-3]
Two things happened after the end of the New Year the church leaders’ prayer meeting. One thing is that one of the women in the church took a lot of sleeping pills and attempted suicide. On that Sunday afternoon my wife, our church elder and two young ladies went to her apartment and helped her. The next day, when my wife went to visit her apartment, the woman was already on the ambulance and went to the hospital. Now she is in the nursing home. Another thing I heard was that one of the college students who went to the church in Korea where I used to serve went to a mission field and drowned. I used the served the English Ministry (EM) with his mother and I remembered seeing him few times during the EM worship. So, when I heard the news about his death, I was very shocked. So, I thought about how to comfort his parents and his older sister. And I wrote a letter to them and I prayed to God. “Abba Father,” I pleaded with God the Father, asking God to comfort them and his friends and church members.
Indeed, this world is full of anxious thing, of painful thing and of sinful thing. As we begin the New Year, we see our beloved brothers and sisters in pain and suffering. How can we comfort our beloved brothers and sisters in Christ who are in pain and suffering? When I think about the word “comfort”, it reminds me Job’s friends in Job 162 and Barnabas in Acts 4:16. When we look at Job 16:2, Job said that his friends who came to comfort him are “sorry comforters”. And when we look at Acts 4:16, the author of the Book of Acts Luke said that Barnabas is “Son of Encouragement”. Although Job’s friends were the sorry comforters, Barnabas in the early church was a true encourager. So when I personally pray for myself, I pray to God like this: ‘Lord, help me be to be an encourager and an evangelist who is fire for You.’ But so many times, I don’t know how to comfort my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ around me who are in pain and suffering. Although I want to love them and comfort them with the Lord’s love, so many times I don’t know what to do.
In the book ‘Spirituality of Comfort’ by Rev. Robert Strand, there are 101 stories about comforting a wounded soul. The book’s preface was written by a priest Henry Nowen, who says that the word “comfort” means ‘to be with a lonely man’. He also says that comforting does not mean taking pain away, but rather being together. And being together, according to Nowen, refers to as “care of soul”. And caring for a soul means crying together, suffering together, feeling together and sympathizes. Priest Henry Nowen said: ‘Often our sorrow makes us to dance. And our dance creates space for our sadness. In the tears of losing a loved one, we find joy that we do not know. In the middle of a party celebrating success, we can feel deep sorrow. Like a clown’s face that seems to be sad and rejoicing in order to make us to be sad or to laugh, sadness, dancing, bitterness, laughter, mourning, and joy belong to a single place. We can see the beauty of life where grief and dancing touch each other’. Do you and I live in the beauty of life where sadness and dancing touch each other?
The Teacher King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 4:1-3 also said what he saw: “Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed-- and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors-- and they have no comforter” (v. 1). What he witnessed in this world was the abuse of the tyrants. In other words, he saw the abused people. And he saw the tears of the abused people. But the problem was there is no one who comforts these abused people. King Solomon saw this. He saw that the abused people had no comforter. And this is what he said: “And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.” What does it mean? It doesn’t mean that it is better to die than to live as if you are getting abused. King Solomon never encourages suicide, saying that suicide is better than being abused. The world we live in these days is a world that encourages suicide. How do you know this? If you look at the internet these days, there is a suicide website. What is surprising is that even if people do not know each other they meet through suicide web sites and commit suicide together. I have heard through people I know that there are few people who have committed suicide. Maybe this world is getting harder and harder now, and many people in life are trying to take their precious lives in suicide. So, it seems that the success of suicide is increasing. Maybe for these people, Ecclesiastes 4: 2 might be misinterpreted from the viewpoint of suicide, saying, ‘Ah, the wise King Solomon said it is better to die than to be abused’. So, you should not take your life, thinking that it is better to die than to live like this. In today's passage, King Solomon never recommends suicide. Rather, when he saw the tears of those who are being abused by those who are in power in this world, he is saying that the lives of such abused people are less than death. In other words, King Solomon does not say that God's given life itself is not better than death, but that the painful life of unjustly oppressed is less than death (Park).
What kind of life would it be if we suffered pain that we could not die? When I think about this question, the North Korean defectors came into my mind. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal regarding the North Korean defectors who entered the United Stated for the first time according to the North Korean Human Rights Act on May 1, 2006. The articles had the testimonies of the defectors who lived the miserable lives in China. The article introduces the woman, a 36-year-old woman, who was a teacher in Pyongyang. She went to a cloth shop to help her with difficult living. She went to a border town to get clothes and lost consciousness during dinner. When she woke up, she was already trafficked and was in China. From there she was sold to a Chinese man and the Chinese husband said, "Killing a North Korean woman like you is easier than killing a chicken." She was beaten so badly that her bones broke, and she thought of suicide once. Wouldn’t there be many more testimonies from many other defectors as well? Although I don’t know well, I still remembered what a pastor said to me: ‘Because I saw the defectors, now I was able to read the Book of Exodus.’
How much more feelings and sympathy with these words in Ecclesiastes 4:3 is true for these people who suffer so much? It is better for those who have not yet been born who have not seen the evil that is done under the sun than those who are still alive (Eccle. 4:2-3). If the defectors were not born at all, they didn’t have to see the evil done in this world and didn’t have to suffer to the point of wanting to die? How about you? When you look back on your past life, did you ever live because you couldn’t die? Have you ever been so painful that you feel it is worse than dying? So, did you ever stay in tears? But when we suffer so much to the point of wanting to die, more than suffering itself, the thing that makes us very difficult is that there is no comforter. It is the fact that when we are the hardest, the most painful, and the heart aches, our hearts are getting more and more troubled by the fact that no one really understands, sympathizes, and comforts us with our hardships, pain and suffering. What is more distressing is the fact that there are those who love us around and try to comfort us, when no one truly comforts us (or perhaps we are so distressed that we are refusing their comfort). When the evil of the wicked does not seem endless, and when the act of abuse and oppression does not show signs of ending, we no longer dream. We no longer have hope. We end up with the last line of hope. This makes us depress. Life without hope is bound to despair. What should we do when we are in such despair? We can learn three things from the Bible:
First, when we are in despair we must speak to our soul.
One of the books I still can not forget is the book Spiritual Depression by Lloyd Jones. What I was challenged in reading the book is that when we are disappointed and depressed, we should speak to our soul like a psalmist. How should I say it? As an example, Pastor Lloyd Jones quoted Psalm 42: 5, 11; 43: 5 – “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God” (3x). So, when I sometimes become discouraged, I remember myself saying this prayer to myself, remembering this psalm: "James, why are you so downcast, O my soul. Why so disturbed within me? James, put your hope in God.” And I try to pray with deliberate looking at the Lord who helps me. When I do, I often experience God's help. You can try it. When your heart is discouraged and in despair, why don’t you proclaim the word of God to yourself, like a psalmist. It doesn’t have to be the Book of Psalms. If you have any God’s promise that you want to hold onto, why don’t you hold on to that promised Word of God and cry out to him. Whenever I am struggling with my church ministry, I am holding unto the His promise Word “… I … build my church’ (Mt. 16:18) and cry out to God. And I know that God certainly helps me.
Second, when we are in despair, we must seek the Lord.
When we are in despair, we must desire Jesus. We should eagerly desire him. Especially when we are in despair because of pain, we must look to Jesus' suffering on the cross. Why is that? The reason is that when we meditate on His suffering, our suffering can be connected to the sufferings of Jesus, so that true comfort and healing can occur. When I personally feel depressed, I sometimes remember the words of Jonah 2: 4 – “I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple’.” The reason I think of this Jonah is because when I disobeyed the Lord's words like Jonah, and is in the midst of a chastisement discipline, I decided that I would look to the temple of the Lord again, because I desperately want to seek him. I hope that when you are depressed and despair, you will rely on this Jonah’s word and look to Him again. I hope you can turn your despair into an opportunity to seek the Lord.
Third, when we are in despair we must hope in the Lord.
Ultimately, I think desperation is making us hope in the Lord. When we live in this world and are despaired because of these and other things, despair is a good opportunity to seek the Lord. Also, I think despair is an opportunity for us to only look to the Lord and hope in Him. That’s why we need to be thoroughly discouraged and in despair by this world. Furthermore, we need to be more or less discouraged and be in despair because of ourselves. The reason is that without such hopelessness, we rarely yearn for and hope in God. That’s why I like the Hymn “My hope is built on nothing less” text 3 lyrics: “His oath, His covenant, His blood, Support me in the whelming flood; When all around my soul gives way He then is all my hope and stay.” I love this song because when all the things we believed in the world are cut off, we began to rely on the Lord more and more. By doing so, all our despair in our hearts fades away and our hearts are filled with hope in the Lord. In doing so, we can praise God this way: (1) “O! Thou, in whose presence my soul takes delight, On whom in affliction I call, My comfort by day, and my song in the night, My hope, my salvation, my all!”, (5) “Dear Shepherd! I hear, and will follow Thy call; I know the sweet sound of Thy voice; Restore and depend me, for Thou art my all, And in Thee I will ever rejoice.”
I hope that the Lord of hope will comfort you. I pray that our Lord will comfort you when no one can comfort you. When you refuse to be comforted by anybody else due to your great and unbearable pains, I pray that the Lord fills your heart with a longing for the Lord and a hope for Him. I pray that you can see the beauty of life, the beauty of Christians, where grief and delight touch each other. As I end this meditation of the Word, I want to share with you what I wrote as I thought about a sister in Christ who made me to see the beauty of the Christian:
You are beautiful.
Even in the tears of the heart,
You smile.
You are beautiful.
Even in the midst of your son’s death,
You give thanks to God,
You are beautiful.
You think about your church members
More than your family,
You are beautiful.
You want to comfort others
More than receiving comfort from others
You love to give
More than receiving,
You are beautiful.
You who hold the heart of Heavenly Father
And use your strength to save souls,
You are beautiful.
You who are glorifying God,
You are beautiful.
I see Christ in you …
With a heart of gratitude to the Comforter, the Holy Spirit,
James Kim
(Praying to become a fervent comforter in love)