Worth Repeating - March 27, 2017

Job 2: 13 Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights.  No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was. (NIV)

A ministry of presence is life-giving to a friend in need.*

Do you know what your “love language” is? I think most of us have two – one that we “speak” and one that we respond to. The language in which I express love the most fluently is “words of affirmation” but the one that speaks to me is “quality time.” Job’s friends heard about his troubles and they got together to go comfort him. And for a whole week, they indulged Job’s apparent need for quality time. They waited for Job to break the silence before they began to speak. My kind of friends!

It’s so hard to know what to say to or do for a friend who is suffering. I haven’t mastered the skill myself, but the attempts by Job’s friends illustrate some dos and don’ts for offering words of comfort - some obvious, some implied.

1. The closer you are to the person, the more likely you are to know the right approach. If you aren’t so well acquainted, look to him or her for clues as to their preference.

2. Don’t be so afraid of saying the wrong thing that you don’t say anything - but it doesn’t matter if you say the right thing if you don’t know when to shut up. (Read the rest of the Book of Job to see how his friends blew this one!)

3. Prayer is always appropriate. Even people who don’t believe in prayer don’t usually mind if you offer to pray for them. (If they do mind, well, they can’t stop you from praying silently!)

4. This one is for the person on the receiving end of the attempts at comfort: Be gracious. Job listened to his friends as they spouted some good-intentioned nonsense. Their words probably didn’t help much but I think the fact that they cared enough to be there was soothing to his aching heart.

Jesus offered words of comfort on various occasions, but in John chapter 11, we see what Jesus did to offer comfort, instead of what he said. His friend Lazarus had died. Jesus knew the story was going to have a happy ending but still, when he saw the grief of Lazarus’ sisters and the other mourners, he was “deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” Then, we read, “Jesus wept.” There is no need to worry that you don’t know what to say when you love someone enough to cry with her.

You must be close enough to feel their pain before they’re close enough to feel your love.*