Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 
Matthew 11: 28  NRS

Most Episcopalians from the Texas who are of my generation will remember hearing the older version of those words.  We just remembered them once a month at Holy Communion.  Any more than that was considered by our parish and our family as unduly High Church.  We were taught that you could actually receive the Sacrament too often.  So, it took some doing to remember these words that were said only once a month.  We may not have been the most religious family on the block, but we followed the rules about too much.

Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.  KJV
 
In Confirmation Class, the nice man who had the dreadful task of attempting to teach about a zillion of us baby boomers, all eleven and twelve years old, about the basics of the faith, told us that these were the Comfortable Words.  I bet if I had been listening to him, instead of acting badly with my friend William Cooper Gardner Jr., I would have heard the nice man explain what it meant for Prayer Book words to be comfortable.  But, since I didn't, I wandered for a pretty long time through a fog of misunderstanding. I've done that before and since.  I actually believed they were words that were supposed to make me feel more comfortable in church.  After all, Holy Communion back then took forever and the pews were terribly uncomfortable after a while, and most of the experience was as uncomfortable as could be.  I had no idea of what it meant to travail, although that sounded like travel and that was what I wished I had been doing every Saturday morning, instead of Confirmation Class.  Ditto for heavy laden.  Even if I had no idea of what a laden was or did.  I needed comfort.
 
It was a long time before I learned what Comfortable Words could be.  My guess is that I wasn't alone in wanting them to be like a nice pillow or a familiar, overstuffed chair.  They just weren't that.  They had an older meaning of comfort.  They were meant to offer encouragement for the life ahead, the future unknown.  They were meant to offer strength to meet those days and whatever life would be in them, mostly days and nights of challenge to any faith at all.  
 
There are some days when all we need are a few words of traditional comfort to get us through.  Being told that it will be alright in the end, can make for a good night's sleep.  But, there are still some days and nights when we need more than that to get us through.  We need encouragement sometimes  just to get one foot in front of the other.  Or to show up at the hospital for chemo anyway.  Strength to face what we know will be a lonely time because that's just where we are in life. Strength to face what we've lost, face sorrow.   Encouragement and strength.  Jesus offered those words to his friends because he knew they needed to hear them to keep going.  He knows us too.  And he wants us to live with strength and courage.  Life takes that.  Faith takes that.   We need to listen for his voice in the words.  Part of the good news is that now we don't have to wait to hear them just once a month.