Daily Lesson for August 24, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Job chapter 2 verses 11 through 13:

11 Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him. 12When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. 13They sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

Pain and suffering are wounding not only in the physical toll they take on a person, but also the social. A sick or grieving person often ends up a very isolated person. The world is for the young and healthy and happy; it does not know what to do with the old and frail and sorrowful. It seems the whole world does its very best to avoid those who suffer

In today’s Lesson, Job’s friends give a beautiful picture of coming near, of being present to suffering. They enter the space of Job’s pain. They do not absorb it themselves. They do not take it away. They do not fix it. They can do none of these. But they enter into it, recognize it, honor it. They weep and lament and dawn ashes over it. They come near.

I remember reading some time ago about how when the Quaker writer Parker Palmer fell into a very severe depression, a friend would come over daily, say nothing, but simply take Parker’s shoes off, and massage his feet. This was his friend’s way of coming to be present, of entering into the space of pain, of touching the suffering. 

We cannot always take one another’s pain away.  But we can enter into its space.  We can step into the house, walk the dark corridor, and enter the room.