"No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was" (Job 2:13).
Have you ever wanted to comfort someone who has had one terrible thing happen after another? Have you held your peace because you were frightened of saying the wrong thing in the face of their extreme pain? How would you comfort Job?
I was in the Middle East and had just been reading the story of Job's friends and how they had come to comfort him for all his terrible sufferings. I read "When they saw him...they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud...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" (Job 2:12-13).
We had just walked over the order from Israel into Jordan a few days previously. It was very early in the morning, near the brook Jabbok, where Jacob wrestled with God. I met God there, for I was wrestling with something too...
"I'm not surprised to find You here," I said. "What a beautiful place."
He nodded. There was something I couldn't read in His eyes.
"I've been here before," He said quietly.
"I know," I said, "I read about it in Genesis. I can't believe I'm here."
"I'm glad you came. I sent for you to have a ministry of 'Presence.'"
"Well that sounds easy, but now that we're here it's so hard – there's so much hatred, such a deep divide and so much hostility. And we've left the same deep-seated smoldering animosity of generations behind us only a few short miles away."
There was a deep secret silence that circled around my thoughts and held me into the sadness. I knew He was letting me feel an infinitesimal fragment of His sorrow about the situation.
"Lord," I managed after a bit, "I feel near to tears all the time as I listen to these people."
"I do too."
"Lord, I read in Your Word, that things were not much different when You lived outside The Front Door for a moment, and that You were a 'man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.'"
"It killed Me," He said. I thought about that!
After a bit I ventured – "But You were able to speak words of redemption into the situation, to save the world – and anyway, You are God! In the face of their deep distress, I feel so little and helpless and, and 'human.' In fact I feel sort of 'unnecessary'! Can I say anything that will help?"
"No."
"I didn't think I could, so why am I here?"
"Because this is where I want you! Why does there have to be a 'why'? Isn't it reason enough to be where I want you to be, among the people I send you to? You are here to have a ministry of Presence and a ministry of Silence. Listen to them!"
"But," I ventured "when I can't do anything, or say anything, or change anything – isn't it a waste of time?"
"I want you here to 'feel' something! To feel the hatred...and weep."
"I can do that."
"Then do it!"
He left. And I took my pencil and wrote a reminder to myself for the next time that I walked into a desperate place of pain.
PRAYER
Lord, when there is nothing to do, it seems in the dark day when pain is so deep and raw around me, and all I can do is to "be there," listen and weep, remind me it is enough to have a ministry of presence, a ministry of silence, and a ministry of tears. I can do that Lord, I can do that. Anyone can do that! Thank you, Lord, for the privilege. Amen.
