“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted…” So begins the Preacher’s list in Ecclesiastes 3.
We might add another to the list this Advent season: a time for exhorting and a time for comforting. 
As for the first, we might think of exhorting the troops to action and other urgings to scary or wearisome action. As for comforting — how we do need to be comforted and consoled!
But what if they were related—the comfort and the exhortation?
One of the beautiful Advent readings is taken from Isaiah 40, which begins, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.”
These words are spoken for a people in exile. But what is this consolation? The exile is nearly over, they (and we) hear. Your iniquities are pardoned. God is coming and “will feed his flock like a shepherd.”
When we turn to the New Testament, we hear Jesus also assure us of comfort. In the Gospel of John he says that he will not leave us orphaned, but will send “another Comforter” (often translated “another Advocate”), indicating that although the Comforter to whom his followers are accustomed (that is, Jesus himself) will soon no longer be visibly present, they will continue to have the divine comfort of the Holy Spirit.
The Greek word used for Comforter is Paraklete, Παράκλητος.
But curiously enough the related word that is often used to mean “comfort” or “encouragement” in the New Testament — παράκλησις, paraklesis — can also mean “exhortation.”
Are they both the same? How can this be?
First, we are important enough to God that it matters how we are doing, whether we are heartened or discouraged: hence the encouragement and the comfort.
We are important enough to God that it matters how we live and how we love. Hence the exhortation.
We are important enough — small, weak, sinful creatures that we are — that God is willing to go to the greatest lengths to find us, console us, and exhort us.
God is merciful. When we fail, as we certainly will, God says, “Be consoled, be comforted, I am coming with might; I will gather you like a lamb in my arms and carry you home rejoicing.” (See Isaiah 40 and Luke 15:1-7.)
But comfort is not only for ourselves. So the comfort we receive is to share with others — hence the exhortation both to proclamation and to action. “Comfort my people.” For as we see in 2 Corinthians, the comfort brings with it its own exhortation.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,
who comforts us in all our affliction,
so that we may be able to comfort those
who are in any affliction,
with the comfort with which
we ourselves are comforted by God.
For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings,
so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.2 Corinthians 1:3-5 (RSV)