“Cozy coze.”
It’s one of my favorite sayings around the home. When we light a fire or we get our jammies on or bundle up in a blanket or change clothes after a long work day, I do a shoulder shimmy and say “cozy coze.” It simply means, all is well and I am comfortable.
The Blessing and Curse of Comfort
Often the Lord gives us tremendous blessing with seasons of comfort or moments where we get to enjoy it during the day. These are generous gifts from God to sinners like us who deserve no such thing.
In fact the Lord gives us comfort as an opportunity for rest and reprieve from the uncomfortable work of being a Christian in a world of sin and brokenness. We know heaven is our ultimate coming comfort for every believer free from sin and sorrow and we get a foretaste of that gift in daily moments of comfort in this life.
Comfort is a gift. Yet as sinners we can turn a good thing into a God thing.
We can so fall in love with comfort that it becomes an idol to us. We do everything we can to avoid uncomfortable realities and pursue comfort with all our striving and energy. John Calvin was right when he said that the human heart is an “idol-making factory.”
So I have to ask myself, do I idolize comfort? If there are uncomfortably opportunities such as talking to a hard person, or going out of my way to take someone home after an event, or dealing with gossip and division, do I run from those opportunities God has given me to serve because I would rather be “comfortable?” That’s a telling question for us all.
Worshiping Jesus and Being Thankful for Comfort
So how do we rightly view comfort in this world?
First, we must reckon deep down in our heart that suffering is the norm. So Paul says to Timothy that “All who desire to live a godly life will suffer” (2 Timothy 3:12). Or what of Jesus calling everyone to take up their cross and deny themselves (Luke 14:27). For the Christian, suffering will be the norm because this world is hostile to our way of life. It was hostile to our King and will be hostile towards us as well.
Second, in light of this we can view any and all comfort as a gift from the Lord. We are sinners. Every one of us. We don’t deserve the good we get. When we receive comfort at the end of a long day or a good cup of coffee during the middle of it with a few moments to relax, this is a gift from the Lord. Thank Him for it.
Third and lastly, we fight every tendency of our heart to say that comfort is better than Jesus. Does comfort food give you more satisfaction than Jesus? Will you stop at nothing to be comfortable even when that means you are being disobedient to Jesus? These are huge questions for us who live in a fallen world where we can all too easily make comfort a Jesus-replacing idol.
Let us then, contend with all our might, to be thankful for moments of comfort, when they come, as gifts from the Lord, and to seek our ultimate comfort and satisfaction in Jesus alone.