Today’s Scripture Reading (May 27, 2018): Job 6
“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the
most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice,
solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to
share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who
can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us
in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing,
not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness,
that is a friend who cares.”
The words belong to Henri Nouwen, from his book “Out of Solitude:
Three Meditations on the Christian Life,” and here Nouwen seems to put his
finger on the problem of Job. What Job needed, and what we all need in times of
deep stress, was someone to cry with him without trying to cure, to sit with
him without the urge to speak, and to touch him without the need to heal. Job
needed friends who were willing to face the reality of powerlessness without
the urge to go and find a solution. But it was the one thing that his friends
simply could not give to him. They wanted to find the cure to the problem and
to teach through the pain. But because they did not understand the root cause of the pain, that was a task for
which they were woefully unqualified.
Here, Job flips the situation on his failing friend. Eliphaz had
argued that Job had forsaken the fear of God or had treated the commands of God lightly. Job had walked
where angels fear to tread, and as a result,
God was teaching him a valuable lesson. What Job needed to do better at this moment was to heed the lesson, to ask
for mercy from God and to promise the Almighty that he would do better in the
future. Job replies that it is Eliphaz and the others sitting with him that
have forsaken the fear of the Almighty because, while they considered
themselves friends of Job, they have withheld their kindness. Although the
process was just beginning, Job seemed to
know what was coming. Instead of sitting and mourning with their friend, next
would come the attempts to give advice, find solutions and cure the situation.
And none of this was what Job needed at
this moment. Job needed nothing more than friends who were willing to sit and
mourn in silence. Job needed friends who would love him when it seemed that the
whole world had turned against him.
And every one of us have
experienced times when that was all that we needed. A wise friend knows when to
sit in silence and when to offer compassionate, constructive advice. Job seemed to have been short on wise
friends.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Job 7
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