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Saturday Morning Worship
Strange Comfort (Mark 13)
-Mary Hulst, preaching
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A pregnant friend of hers who has suffered from previous miscarriages rejoices at the pains of her pregnancy, Hulst said-the sickness, the cravings, the discomfort and pangs. She didn't have those things before her miscarriages, Hulst explained. So they give Hulst's friend the "strange comfort," an assurance that "something is very right."

Jesus uses the metaphor of birth pains in Mark 13, his vision for the last things that is clearly "not for the casual observer," Hulst said, noting that the vision was restricted to a private core group of apostles. There is no condition attached to these predictions; no "if this ... then that." Everything he says is going to happen.

And "herein lies the comfort," Hulst said. There is "comfort in the truth that this is not all there is." If the disturbing predictions are sure to come true, "then so are the words that promise his return" (v.28, 31).

When the trauma Jesus forecasts unfolds, we should be assured that '"everything is very right, because everything is as Jesus said it would be. ... We as followers of Jesus Christ are not to be afraid."

-Nathan Bierma