Readings for today: Job 10-12, Acts 8:4-25
One of the things I’ve learned over my twenty-plus years of pastoring is how to meet people in their suffering. How to best come alongside them, providing comfort and relief and a safe space to grieve. Most of the time when someone asks, “Why?” what they are really asking is “Where?” They may say things like, “Why did God allow this to happen to me? Why did God let this happen to the person I love? Why does God allow such things to happen in the world around us?” But if you try and give them the biblical or theological answer, it will fall on deaf ears. Because they don’t really want to know “why” so much as “where.” “Where was God when this happened to me? Where was God when this happened to the person I love? Where is God when such terrible and tragic things happen in the world around me?” Is He there? Is He present? Is He amidst the suffering? Does He suffer to?
Job’s friends are perfect examples of what happens when we fail to listen with our hearts. They keep listening to Job’s words and trying to answer his questions but that’s not what Job needs or wants in this moment. Job is wise. He already knows the answers to the questions he’s posing. “But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Who does not know such things as these?” (Job 12:3) So the last thing he needs is a refresher on his theology. What he needs is his friends to simply sit with him in the ashes of his life. Weep with him over all he has lost. Listen to him as he rages at God for all that has happened. Let him get it all out. But his questions make them uncomfortable. His pain makes them uneasy. They are not courageous enough to manage their own anxiety as they listen to their dear friend grieve. So they start to respond. They start to push back. They start to correct and challenge. Rather than comfort Job, they are now trying to comfort themselves.
“Should a multitude of words go unanswered, and a man full of talk be judged right? Should your babble silence men, and when you mock, shall no one shame you? For you say, ‘My doctrine is pure, and I am clean in God’s eyes.’ But oh, that God would speak and open his lips to you, and that he would tell you the secrets of wisdom! For he is manifold in understanding. Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves.” (Job 11:2-6) Zophar cannot help himself. Job’s complaints are too painful. Too raw. Too real. He feels they demand an answer. And while he gets his theology right, he could not be more wrong. He is responding to Job without love which is why his words come off sounding like a noisy gong or clashing cymbal.
Love is essential when responding to suffering. Agape love. Selfless love. Love that is patient and tender and kind. Love that never insists on its own way or draws attention to itself. This sort of love can bear the suffering of another. This sort of love can believe God is present even in those moments when life is at its most heartbreaking. This sort of love provides hope in the face of tragedy. This sort of love endures when all seems lost. This is the love Job needed from his friends. He didn’t need answers to his questions. He didn’t need a response to his rage. He simply needed friends who would listen and love him in the midst of his terrible condition.
God shows us this love. He met us in the utter tragedy of our sinful condition and became one of us. One with us. One for us. He was not afraid to sit with us in the ashes of our existence. He didn’t feel the need to correct us, judge us, or condemn us. Instead, He offers us unconditional love. While we were still sinners. Still at war with God. Still trapped in our rebellion. Still enslaved to our corrupt desires. Christ comes to us. Christ suffers for us. Christ dies for us. This is how God defines love. It’s never about Him. It’s always about us and His desire to rescue us out of our brokenness and pain. In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and gave Himself up for us. This, friends, is how we show love to others. This is how we meet them in the midst of their suffering and pain. We comfort them with the same comfort Christ showed to us.
Readings for tomorrow: John 13-15, Acts 8:26-40