If I was cold while lying in bed and someone placed a comforter on me and I did not feel any warmer, I would wonder what's wrong.  If I were sitting on my recliner and threw an afgan over my legs to get them warm, and they continue to be as cold as ever, I would wonder what is wrong.  The source of comfort is real - I can even see it and feel it, but is not connecting to what is cold.  And another comforter or afgan wouldn't help.

It may too often seem that way in our relationship with God.  "The God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles" does us no good at all if we do not feel warmer or comforted in the midst of the cold.  The truth doesn't help - it just sounds good.  And there is enough truth around that sounds good but doesn't help to fill a garbage dump that covers several states the size of Texas twenty feet high.  (That is just a rough estimate - could be off a state or two, or a country or two, and the height may be off a mile or two.)

You may have had the experience of trying to sleep on a cot in a cold place, and no matter how many more covers you put on you, you don't get any warmer.   The blankets simply don't offset where the cold is coming from - underneath.  To pile more truth on top of the cold simply doesn't help.  It feels like it should help, but it doesn't.

While we live in a beautiful world, there is something that is very, very wrong, and it hurts very, very bad, if we let it. What is missing is love, real love that comes from the heart that extends itself to all human beings, especially those who need it the most as evidenced by their self and other-destructive attitudes and behavior.   It is the opposite of self-protective obsession.  It is what heals hurt.

Sometimes those needy fearful self-protective beings live very close to us, in our homes.  Sometimes they live in us, and we may discover through honest reflection it is us.  We may know there are parts of us that refuse to be touched with the comfort that only God can give.  It may be the parts of ourselves that we believe are simply too bad, too flawed, too messed up, too filled with shame, too needy -parts we don't even want to acknowledge are there and to a large degree we can hide from.

And so when I get hurt my immediate inner response is to tense up and withdraw a bit, especially when I admit my hurt and anger and the other doesn't seem to care, as evidenced by their explanations of why what they did was necessary, even implying that it was because of me that they did what they did. If I believe them, I begin the self-hate.  If I don't believe them (I still think the fault is theirs), I begin the other-hate even as I pretend I am no longer affected by what they did. 

 Either way I begin to build a wall inside me, seemingly a natural, necessary, and smart way of dealing with my desire not to get hurt again.  And I may feel a little safer.  Not comforted, just safer.  I have taken my way of dealing with pain in my world and it doesn't seem to be a problem.

One can live many years this way.  My way seems to work!  Praise God!  I can see myself as a good person/Christian even as I wonder why I don't experience a greater sense of being comforted by God when I hurt.   Oh well, I will be a martyr, one of those who is willing to do right no matter what it costs, even if the price I pay is never being deeply comforted.  And I feel righteous again.  Praise God again!

Would you want a relationship with me?

(This is getting too long so I'm going to have to do a "to be continued" in the next reflection.)