Wrap Your Arms Around Me

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,  2 Corinthians 1:3 ESV

Comfort – Do you remember? Do you remember sitting in your father’s lap, safe, his arms around you, holding you as the most precious person in all the world? Do you remember what it felt like to know deep down inside that you were loved, right to the core? I hope you do. If you can’t remember that feeling, if it was tragically never part of your childhood, then it will be particularly difficult for you to understand Paul’s use of the Greek parakaleo. Most of the time we don’t think parakaleo is about having strong arms hold us tight. Most of the time we think parakaleo is the Greek word for the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. And most of the time, we think comfort means something like serenity or contentment, not solace or reassurance. Our prosperity-addicted society thinks of comfort as comfortable, not as consolation, but Paul was not a prosperity preaching television personality. He knew sorrow. So do you and I. That’s why the Jewish Greek of parakaleo is not about life at ease. It is about acts of love when life hurts.

The TDNT article on parakaleo notes: “In the LXX the words are used for 15 Hebrew terms and also occur in free renderings. Mostly, however, they are used for nāḥam, and this makes ‘comfort’ the main sense, especially in bereavement (Gen. 24:67).”^[1] In other words, parakaleo is the Greek equivalent of sitting on God’s lap and knowing He loves you when life hurts. This is not theory. It is not a paper declaration, treaty, theological doctrine or gospel tract. This is emotional connection. For many of us, it is the desperate cry of our souls.

And that’s why it seems so unfathomable, even scary. We don’t know what this kind of deep emotional connection feels like because it has not been part of our experience. We know that it must exist. We pray that it will be manifested. We hope it is real. But it remains a theological ideal rather than a lived reality. We haven’t felt the arms of God despite our grand theology of care. Perhaps we need to remember something else that Paul wrote: “Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10 NASB). Perhaps we don’t feel the arms of God wrapped around us because we are afraid to be weak. In our efforts to secure ourselves, we have constructed a sanctuary that prevents the experience of parakaleo, the very thing we hoped would make us feel safe. Perhaps the key to emotional theology is vulnerability, not protection. When we let God care for us, we take the risk of abandonment, and the specter of that risk is often what prevents us from letting go of all those security behaviors. To be vulnerable to God is to accept our weaknesses, confess our need and trust Him. Then comfort arrives.

Topical Index: parakaleo, comfort, nāḥam, 2 Corinthians 1:3, 2 Corinthians 12:10

^[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (778–779). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.