Dear Friends,

Reading the Book of Job in the Daily Lectionary this month has underscored for me again how precious is the ministry of coming alongside those who are in pain. The isolation we’ve experienced under COVID has shown us all how much we need the support of the Body of Christ. And I know how grateful I’ve been recently for someone who has been a real comfort to me as I’ve coped with a difficult situation.

Job experienced overwhelming loss: the death of his children, the theft of his wealth, and the deterioration of his health.

When word of Job’s suffering came to his friends, they responded promptly:

“Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him” (2:11).

They found themselves unable to take in what had befallen Job. “And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven” (2:12).

And then Scripture explains their most gracious gift to their friend: “And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great” (2:13).

Seven days of silent companionship. It’s clear that those days marked Job’s friends at their best, because for the next 35 chapters we read how they presumed to lecture Job on why he was suffering and what God thought about him and his situation. Their words are a blend of truth and error, of insight and false accusation. Halfway through their long speeches filled with dubious theology, Job calls them “miserable comforters” (16:2).

Job voiced his honest thoughts, doubts and fears, as well as his deep faith in God. His friends react by rebuking him and unfairly accuse him of deserving everything he was experiencing.

Finally, in Chapter 38, God comes to Job and answers him, speaking out of a whirlwind. God does not tell Job why he is suffering or why suffering exists in the world. But God does reveal himself to Job. He is the Creator, the sovereign Lord who is also very present with Job, and that makes all the difference.

Unlike his friends who talked about God, Job wanted to know God. Job never got the answers to suffering that he was looking for, but in the end he got something much, much better. He met God. He was able to see God present with him in his pain and he understood, if not everything, at least enough.

At one point, Zophar had said that he wished that God would speak, assuming that God would rebuke Job (12:5). But when God speaks, he says to Eliphaz, “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (42:7).

Nancy Guthrie wrote a remarkable devotional commentary on the Book of Job that is also an account of the Lord’s work in her life and that of her husband during the illness and death of their six months old daughter, named Hope. It’s called Holding Onto Hope. Nancy Guthrie writes, “The day after we buried Hope, my husband said to me, ‘You know, I think we expected our faith to make this hurt less, but it doesn’t.’ Our faith gave us an incredible amount of strength and encouragement while we had Hope, and we were comforted by the knowledge that she is in heaven. Our faith keeps us from being swallowed by despair. But I don’t think it makes our loss hurt any less.”

It is difficult to be with people who are in pain. We wish we could fix the situation or provide answers or say something to make things better. And when we find that we can’t, we are tempted to pull back.

But Job and his friends remind us that being faithfully and prayerfully present to someone who suffers is a great gift.

As Paul wrote to the Church in Corinth, “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” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4).

Would you ask the Lord to give you the grace to be his instrument of compassion to someone you know who is in pain, offering the Lord’s comfort as you walk faithfully alongside through the deep valley of suffering?

Faithfully yours in Christ,

The Rt. Rev. John A. M. Guernsey