“‘Comfort, yes, comfort My people!’” These are the words God speaks to His people in Isaiah 40:1. These are the words that were running through my mind last year and into this year with the pandemic touching so many people’s lives. I got Covid mid December and was hospitalized for four days. After returning home, it took another month to fully recover. One of my mums here in the Mother City of Cape Town contracted Covid, was hospitalized and due to other health issues, her 80 year old body didn’t recover and she passed away. I’m facilitating a Bereavement journey course and quite a few are attending because their loved ones have died of Covid or other reasons. There are so many who need those words spoken to them, “Comfort, yes, comfort My people!”
Whether it is the grieving, the hurt, the persecuted, the marginalized, or the ostracized, Daddy God is wanting us to know that He has not abandoned us, but rather, is ever present in our times of need.
In 1996, I wrote a song that referred to an event I had experienced when I was around 17 years old. I was 33 when I wrote it and although I had come to know healing and freedom, Daddy God wanted to reassure me that He was present at that moment in time. As a good, good Heavenly Father He wanted to bring me comfort.
I had left that song in the archives and in 2019 He reminded me of it and prompted me to take it out of the archives and revise it. The recurring theme after my Dad’s passing in December 2017 was “Wounded Healers” and that is what He was shaping me into even during the release of the play I spearheaded, and wrote many of the pieces for, called “The Three Cries” staged in 2018. Here is the facebook link if you want to watch excerpts of that production: https://www.facebook.com/The-Three-Cries-213175006062820/videos/?ref=page_internal
In revising the song, I received the assistance of Kumbee Tjirimuje, a young man from Namibia, who attends the church of which I’m on the Pastoral team, who also sings with me. We recorded the song the end of 2019 and Serge Lomago from the DRC on guitar and Bekithemba Mbambo from Zimbabwe on keyboard also from my church added the instrumentals.
It’s a song where God is using my experience of feeling like a shadow and forgotten, and now after the healing He has brought me, I can tell others that they aren’t a shadow anymore. Daddy God sees them in their most pained place, and through His Son Jesus, in His most pained place, feels their pain. The good news is that He doesn't leave us in our pain. Because of His resurrection from the dead, He is the only One who can bring healing to our wounded, troubled hearts.
I believe Daddy God wants to use this song to minister to the multitudes that are hurting and even wondering where Jesus is in their pain.
Please have a listen and pass it onto anyone you think needs to know they are not a shadow anymore.
It’s called “Shadows - You Felt My Pain” by Kathy Gooch. Here’s the link on Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/kathy-gooch/shadows-you-felt-my-pain
