Tears for Another
Because they suffer.
I have this experience at times and I hope you do too — watching someone you care about go through pain.
I’m not hoping for this, and honestly I don’t particularly like tearing up, but when events happen outside my control and I see suffering up close enough that my eyes fill, I am lifted to an emotional and spiritual place outside of myself. My world expands and I enter a state of co-suffering. My problems shrink and I am given a unique privilege.
In this condition of being near another’s pain not my own, the most effortless and natural response is to pray, to ask for their relief and recovery. And because there really are not words in any of us to relieve this sort of deep suffering others are experiencing, please recall within yourself what happens next.
Our inner beings, our souls, cry out.
From deep inside we call to that which we cannot see but know is there somewhere. And our universal request is that he fixes the problem and takes the pain away.
What then follows this silent cry is a choice we must and will have to make. This is because God, although he can answer with a complete yes, usually delays. At least as far as we can tell. Life is much more complicated and confusing than whatever it is we think is the perfect answer to our pleadings.
So we are left to make a profound decision about God, life, and the nature of love and our circumstances.
It is the faith question.
Is God worth trusting in the middle of unresolved uncertainty or will we take Job’s wife’s advice?
The answer is not as simple or obvious as any of us think at first. That’s why little moments of reflection like this one can be of great value. (And please note in the two passages below about Job’s situation, she did not take her own advice).
And the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.”
Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”
And the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life.”
So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes.
Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.”
But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?”
In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
Job 2:3-10 (ESV)
And at the end of the story . . .
And the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. And he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. He had also seven sons and three daughters.
Job 42:12-13 (ESV)
[As far as we know, Job’s wife was the same person through the story. She was blessed in spite of her initial doubt and discouragement. We too are saved by grace.]
