I’m reading the book of Job. It is not my favorite because it’s hard to accept that God allows a faithful and righteous man to lose everything. I don’t like to think about that, but Job is the first of the books of wisdom in the Bible, so I read it because there is stuff in there that I need to know. Also, as hard as it may be, it never hurts to take a good look at myself and admit that I don’t measure up to Job’s faithfulness.
I’m only six chapters in this time, but it struck me this morning that Job has some serious wisdom for friendship and ministry. As the story goes, God points out Job’s faithfulness to Satan and Satan challenges God like, “Yeah right, of course he’s faithful, you bless everything he does.” Then God allows Satan to plague Job so that Satan can see that Job is always faithful, in good times and in bad times (that’s a whole lesson in itself, but not the one that struck me today). Satan takes everything from Job, his livestock, his property, his family, and his health.
Job is s.u.f.f.e.r.i.n.g.
This is when Job’s friends come to visit. They also know the Lord, and they begin to question Job’s behavior. They suggest he has sinned and that God is correcting him for something. You can go read the whole conversation for yourself in chapters 4 and 5, but Eliphaz, the first friend to speak, really piles on. He says smart things, but that is not what Job needs to hear in his grief. His words are hurtful and Job has the guts to tell him so in 6:14-15, “To him who is afflicted, kindness should be shown by his friend, even though he forsakes the fear of the Almighty. My brothers have dealt with me deceitfully like a brook”. In my words, Job said, “Hey, my friends should be comforting me, not lecturing. You looked like a cold drink of water coming to refresh my soul, but really you are a dried up stream in the desert, leaving me thirsty and hopeless.”
THAT is what struck me. How often do we respond to grief with questioning and correction and solutions? Humans like to fix things. I know I do. I like to know all the answers and tell what I know, and I like to fix things. But, I also know that in the deep, dark grief that has threatened to swallow me whole, I didn’t want correction and solutions and answers. I wanted someone to sit with me and just let me be hurt for a minute. I wanted someone to say, “I love you and you are going to be okay” and “You have a big, beautiful life and you don’t have to live in this grief forever.”
I wanted comfort.
I’ve thought about friends who have comforted me - friends who sat through quiet lunches while I was traumatized by Dave’s cancer diagnosis and treatment and just let me be quiet, friends who listened without judgement to how hard it is to go on with life after cancer changes everything, friends who prayed with us and cared for us when hard, soul-wrenching things happened at King’s Home, friends who know my deepest, most personal wounds and just love me without telling me what to do. That is friendship. That is ministry. See, I know that God is always with me because His spirit lives in me, but His spirit lives inside other believers, too, and sometimes a soul needs another physical soul to sit with it in its grief. Sometimes we need to feel God’s presence in the quiet of another soul who is willing to just sit and listen without fixing, to reassure us that we are loved and we have worth.
Job needed a friend to be compassionate, to care for him, to comfort him, and thank goodness he had the guts to say just that because I needed to be reminded that sometimes I need to stop trying to fix things. Sometimes, my job as a friend is just to be still and let my friend feel God’s presence in their grief.
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