Put Your Own Mask on First
“As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; and you will be comforted in Jerusalem.” Isaiah 66:13 NASB
Comfort– The needs of the world press upon us. Who will answer? You and I, of course. We who have been blessed must respond to the great agony of life, the teeming masses whose worlds are confined to a daily search for food and shelter. On every side we feel the guilt of being born to privilege, to plenty, to protection, because for most of humanity, what we discard as worthless is more than they will ever have. It is a moral outrage that the 250 richest people have more total wealth than 2.5 billion of the world’s poorest. By persuasion or legislation, we are inclined to take severe measures to correct this imbalance of misery.
But before we run to the rescue, perhaps it’s worth noting a few things:
It’s admirable to give liberally to the poor but it won’t do much good to become one in the process.
A bleeding heart can’t help anyone if it bleeds to death.
A wounded healer must first know she needs healing herself.
Put your own mask on first. Then help others.
“I will comfort you,” says YHVH. The verb is nāḥam. “The origin of the root seems to reflect the idea of ‘breathing deeply,’ hence the physical display of one’s feelings, usually sorrow, compassion, or comfort.”[1] Put your own mask on first. It’s important to note that nāḥam is just “comfort.” It also is translated as “be sorry, repent,” and “regret.” All deep-breathing exercises. It seems that God’s comfort is necessary before you and I can comfort someone else, just as remorse and repentance precede restitution. But this implies some initial self-sustenance. It’s part of the “Love your neighbor as yourself” idea. If you can’t stand to look at the moral failure in the mirror, chances are you won’t be able to communicate abiding concern and love for someone not in the mirror. This process, by the way, isn’t as easy as it might seem. Loving who we are is difficult, especially since we are so intimately familiar with all the reasons why we are unlovable. Being told that God loves us anyway really doesn’t alter the reality of mirror-gazing. When God promises comfort, He does not mean “in spite of your pitiful and decrepit state.” He means that His comfort extends to all of who you are—the good, the bad and especially the ugly. Until we embrace the hidden, empty, terrifying space within, we can’t breathe the fresh air of comfort. Buechner poignantly describes the problem:
“ . . . because we know that we are less than our names: we are our names minus whatever belongs in the empty place. And the question a man is apt to ask in the darkest moments of his life is what salvation can there be, from anywhere, for the man who is less than his name.”[2]
But there is good news. God knows we are less than our names, just as we know, perhaps even better. Now you’re waiting for the “But He loves you anyway” line. No, it’s not coming. What’s coming is this: because God knows the emptiness in our names, we are invited to know it too, not simply to acknowledge its existence but rather to sink into it, to let it come to the surface, to care for the brokenness we are. God’s comfort is not in spite of us. It is because of us, and the comfort He offers is the comfort for how we became who we are, how the journey twisted and turned, fell and climbed until we came to today, now, this moment. God gave us grace to get this far. The oxygen mask is dangling in front of you. Put your own mask on first.
Topical Index: comfort, nāḥam, Isaiah 66:13
[1]Wilson, M. R. (1999). 1344 נָחַם. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 570). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2]Frederick Buechner Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons(HarperOne, 2006), p. 31.
