Tuesday, July 8, 2025  

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Today's Scripture
Isaiah 66:10–14

Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her,
all you who love her;
rejoice with her in joy,
all you who mourn over her—
that you may nurse and be satisfied
from her consoling breast;
that you may drink deeply with delight
from her glorious bosom.

For thus says the Lord:
I will extend prosperity to her like a river,
and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream;
and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm,
and dandled on her knees.
As a mother comforts her child,
so I will comfort you;
you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice;
your bodies shall flourish like the grass;
and it shall be known that the hand of the Lord is with his servants,
and his indignation is against his enemies. (NRSV)

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Reflection

Isaiah 66:13 provides one of the most compelling analogies for understanding our relationship with God. God is to us as a comforting mother is to her child in distress.

God grants that all people everywhere relate to this analogy, though experience tells us that some people’s experience of their mother is not one of comfort. So in the same way that the far more prevalent paternal analogy for God is difficult as a result of earthly fathers, so the maternal analogy has its limits. That’s the thing about analogies: they have limits.

But maybe the strength of language like this for growing in our relationship to God is precisely in the language’s limitations. There is a world of possibility in the “as” of “as a mother comforts her child,” isn’t there? Different mothers comfort in different ways — in embraces, in words, in preparing food, in silent listening. Perhaps the heart of the image of God as a comforting mother is its inexhaustibility; there is no end to the ways of comforting mothers, and we will never know them all, just as we will never know all of God.

As with most Biblical metaphors of relationship, this one is plural. I believe that God is to us individually as a mother comforting her only child, yes, but the prophet Isaiah gave this image to a people whose story was entering a new chapter filled with uncertainty about the future. The horrors of the past — namely, the exile in Babylon — are past, but the rebuilding is taking its time, and murmurs from abroad portend more political instability. The comfort available to the people in this moment relates to both the national trauma of the past and the shared sense of uncertainty, perhaps even dread, about the future.

What does a mother’s comfort look and feel like to us in such a moment? In my imagination, it’s a seat at a table where friends and strangers are welcome and where everyone has what they need. Words of assurance are recited, and space is given for quiet, for the assurance that only God can give.

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Prayer

God of all comfort, speak a word of comfort in our distress and a word of blessing in our delight. May our life be a comfort to all who need it, and may our comfort be as healing and whole-making as yours, as a mother who comforts her child. Amen.  

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Written by Rocky Supinger, Senior Associate Pastor

Reflection and Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church

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