The Gift of Presence

August 12

Job 1-3

Psalm 90:7-12

Proverbs 20:10-11

2 Corinthians 1:15-2:17

The Gift of Presence

“When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads.  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 NIV

These verses give us an excellent example to follow when we are ministering to people who are going through difficult times.  Job’s friends started out doing all the right things.  When they did open their mouths, they said all the wrong things and blew it, but there are several lessons we can learn from them.  Their reaction when they saw Job tells us that they were good friends who loved him and cared deeply for him.  They had no doubt heard about all the difficulty he had been through.  They knew about his children’s deaths and the loss of his possessions and how he was suffering from a terrible physical condition.  Any one of those things would have been horrible, but all of them in such a short amount of time was unbearable.  They wept.  Then this passage tells us that they sat on the ground with him.  That seems to be a detail that could have been omitted, but it wasn’t.  This is a beautiful picture of friendship.  Job was on the ground in torment.  Instead of standing over him giving him advice or judgement, they got down on the ground with him.  They joined him in his pain.  They didn’t tell him to get up off the ground and shake it off.  They got down there and wallowed in the pain with him and they stayed there for seven days and nights.  That’s a long time.  If I stayed on the ground for an hour, I think I might have a hard time getting up, but they stayed there with him for a whole week.  And during that week no one said a word.  They just wept and joined him in his sorrow. 

When we are going through unbearable pain the last thing we need is someone telling us what they would do or about a time when something similar happened to them.  We don’t need advice and we don’t want to hear cliché phrases telling us things will get better.  There will be a time for all of that later, but in the early days of facing tragedy, the best thing we can do is give them the gift of our presence.  We need to get down on the floor with them, cry with them and let them grieve.  All that really matters is that they know we love them, and we are grieving with them.  They need to know that we are hurting with them and that because they are in pain, we are in pain too.  Sometimes we feel like we should be strong for them, and we shouldn’t cry, but I don’t think that is the best approach.  We should not fake emotion, but we should feel free to express the emotions we are feeling and give them the freedom to express theirs.  We have discussed spiritual gifts several times lately.  Those with the gift of mercy are much better at this than the rest of us.  Mercy is definitely not one of my gifts, but I don’t get to use that as an excuse.  The Holy Spirit will provide me with everything I need to minister to anyone He places in my path.  Knowing I don’t have to worry about saying exactly the right thing makes it a little easier to face.