Daily Devotionals
2021
Monday, December 6
David Saff
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. (Isaiah 40:1)
“I know you all believe in God up there,” she says. We’re in the basement of Park Street Church on a Saturday morning. She’s come for a warm room and holds a cup of coffee my son brought her. She looks up through the ceiling at the sanctuary. “The thing I want to know is, how should I believe God is real, and good, when so many bad things happen to my friends?”
You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout. (v 9)
“Why are bad things happening to everyone around us, and we’re OK?” my son asks. He’s still dealing with a family friend’s grim diagnosis, another virus-canceled plan, and now, a warming center friend has died in an accident.
A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord…” (v 3)
I want answers, to take the stand as God’s defense attorney, proving from logic and law that God is good, removing doubt. To explain how it all works together, to comfort, comfort, to say that it’s really not that bad. Instead, I tell her, “I don’t know. But would you be willing to pray with me for them?” She agrees, and together we go to God with our questions.
Together we pray with our kids for the strength to not be OK while people we know and love suffer, and to find a way to hold them. Like John the Baptist, who lived Isaiah’s words, and Moses before him, we reach for hope that God leads us into the desert wilderness not to abandon us, but to reveal himself as he meets us there.
He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms, and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young. (v 11)
David lives in Arlington and has been attending Park Street Church for 20 years. He is passionate about good crossword puzzles and visiting prisoners. David has four kids that he is super proud of.