Introducing The Comfortable Words

🎉Surprise! 🎉

I have a (fun?) surprise for my Lil Swipes (oh yeah, we just found the name #lilswipes) this month. Breaking into our regularly scheduled program (The Swipe Up will drop later this week, have no fear) here to tell you about a fun thing I’m launching today. Say hello to The Comfortable Words. 👋

The Comfortable Words is a 10-day digital devotional resource for those of us who sometimes feel like the darkness is winning. I’m going to talk more about that a little further down, but first: some housekeeping.

Because you’re a #lilswipe, you get first access (I’m not even telling the rest of the internet that it’s available until later this week…but you should feel FREE to share to your heart’s content). AND as a small thank you for letting me live rent-free in your inbox, a 20% off code — SWIPEUP. I feel so safe launching things with you all, and I don’t take it for granted.

And now, some vulnerability:

When I was younger, I was given a nice necklace from my parents. 24k gold, a treasured possession. It represented more than just a nice piece of jewelry: it was a sign of favor, a talisman that physically reminded me of their love and affection. At some point, I stopped wearing it daily and it ended up in the back of a jewelry box, tangled up with other necklaces which shared its fate.

I have a clear memory of re-discovering the necklace and realizing that I had not properly attended to it. The thin metal knots proved silent, delicate work to untangle. I had to use different tools, different techniques, and patience. My mom gave me the trick about using a sewing needle. My grandmother told me you can put a couple of drops of olive oil on it to more easily slide the links over each other. It took a while, I got plenty frustrated, but eventually, it worked. Necklace restored.

Earlier this year, I began a process of picking up my faith and examining its underside. I found myself deeply grieved by the state of the world, both on a large scale and in my personal world. Sex abuse scandals in the church, family tragedy, broken relationships friends walking through impossible circumstances, the news, an uprooting of former foundations.

I needed to know if the necklace I had was worth untangling.

I needed to see if the words my faith offered held under the scrutiny of the light of truth.

The Comfortable Words is the result of (some of) that wrestling. What I found in scripture is not copy for the greeting card aisle, but genuine comfort. Not warm fuzzies, but a bonfire that leads you back and keeps you from freezing in the middle of the night. This devotional is deeply personal to me, and sometimes that makes me VURRY nervous to push that “launch” button, but I know from DMs and emails and conversations that many of you are walking through the same thing.

I had to work through this in order to figure out what I believed. I’m definitely not as afraid to press on hard things. I’m not as fearful of holding the tension of two seemingly opposing emotions or truths. I’ve often felt like Nicodemus: growing up under a certain set of rules and laws, believing deeply in them. Not as rote tradition or cultural norm, but experiencing God within these boundaries. Not only did Nicodemus devote his professional life to these laws, they meant something to him personally. And not because he believed they were the best way to live, because he believed they are THE way to true life and eternal life after this one. Now imagine someone comes along, someone who speaks in the Temple and does miracles in the name of God, and He says some really uprooting things about the Law, this thing to which you’ve invested and devoted your entire life.

Nicodemus strikes a posture here that is very comforting. He’s one of the pre-eminent guys on the Law, and every time Jesus explains something, he’s like, “Hey, look, that’s cool, but what?” He needs to understand, because, as he says in John chapter 3, verse 2, Nicodemus knows Jesus is a teacher from God. Here we have Nicodemus attempting to reconcile two things he knows to be true: Jesus is of God, and the law is of God, but the way he was taught to interpret the Law is not how Jesus is doing it.

There is so much comfort to found in the Nicodemus posture of “help me understand this.” The world sometimes makes us feel like we MUST have DEFINITIVE answers about every aspect of theology and religion. Nicodemus is showing us here that we CAN look. We CAN ask. We can hold the tension of believing two hard things at the same time. And the things we believed at one time don’t have to always stay the same. We test it against scripture, and we ask the Holy Spirit to guide us. It sounds simple. It’s not. It’s brutal work that will test you.

But here is what I know: I know grief is never shushed in scripture (or when it is, it’s soundly rebuked). I know Jesus was angry. I know pain is never told to “just get over it.” I know one of the largest books of the Bible is essentially the diary of a depressed doubter who made some of the biggest mistakes there are to make. I know Job yelled at God. I know when He was alone in the desert, Jesus told scripture to Himself. I know this book is full of those who cried out, called out, poured lament, and were called beloved. I know we can beat on His chest.

The Comfortable Words are verses in the Anglican liturgy meant to give “peace to those broken by sorrow or troubled by doubt.” They aren’t meant to make you comfortable in the modern sense of the word. They are meant to offer comfort. Carl Sagan said, “If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.” He wasn’t necessarily talking about scripture, but at some point, a test is in order: are these words as powerful as they claim to be, or not?

This is what we’ll do together in The Comfortable Words. We’ll examine the four verses, plus six more that I’ve chosen. Do they hold up? Can they hold you up? Are they worthy of belief or do they belong in the greeting card aisle? These verses offer two different kinds of comfort: comfort in how the Lord forgives us, and comfort for our sorrows. And in the end, aren’t they asking the same question: am I loved by God, no matter what? That’s what we'll seek to answer in these pages.

I told my spiritual director last week that I have this image of walking out on the ice. I have no idea if it will hold. She reminded me that even there, on the ice, the Holy Spirit is with me. I’m not alone out there, testing the thickness and temerity of the whole of faith.

And this is just my way to share that with you: that in grief, in anger, in untangling, in doubt, you’re not alone either.

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All that to say, here’s a thing I made. If you’ve been around since the Lent guide, you’ll see some things you recognize as far as formats (you can read it on your e-reader, you can print it out and bind it up, you can have the content delivered daily to your inbox). There are also some new features based on the feedback I got from O Heavy Lightness: there’s an audio version that you can subscribe to via a private podcast link, or listen to like an album. You guys are kind of the beta group, so if you see a broken link or something that isn’t working, feel free to holler at me. Thank you for being cool and kind and asking for this: I do not take that lightly.

Lil Swipes for life.
Don’t forget about that 20% off code SWIPEUP.
Tell your friends.
Peace be with you.

— Erin