Daily Lesson for January 7, 2019

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Job chapter 16 verses 1 through 3:


Then Job answered:
2
“I have heard many such things;
    miserable comforters are you all.
3
Have windy words no limit?
    Or what provokes you that you keep on talking?”

When I was a CPE (Certified Pastoral Education) student our supervisors made us do what are called verbatims — reconstructions of conversations we had while making the rounds as chaplains in the hospital. We would write down what the patient or the nurse or doctor said and then how we responded and try to trace the conversation as we best remembered it. Our supervisors were always much more interested in what we rather than our interlocutors.  Our anxieties always appeared. Our need to explain, or control, or theologize pain and suffering always, showed up in what we said and/or how we said it. So did our tendency to redirect conversations away from places which made us nervous or uncomfortable back onto firmer terrain. Come to find out, we were really master manipulators with how we could orchestrate the direction of a conversation. But our supervisors could see right through us. They would reflect with us, always asking the question, “Why? — Why did you say that?  Where did that come from? What need in you was served by what you said?”

Job’s interlocutor Eliphaz is a wise man. Some of the most profound things in all of Scripture come from his mouth. “Are the consolations of God too small for you,” is a question for us all to consider when we suffer or struggle.

But Job is the one with the real wisdom in today’s Lesson. And the real wisdom comes in the question, “Why?” or, in the translation above, “What? — What provokes you that you keep on talking?”

We may have wisdom to give. We may have good advice to offer. We could really reframe things. But when it comes to other people’s suffering, we should keep on asking ourselves “Why?” or “What? — What provokes is to say the things we do?”

It’s not that we must remain silent when we face other people’s suffering. Silence is no answer. But we have to reflect and keep on reflecting on the words we do offer, lest they be empty, or insensitive, or cruel, or — most likely — just for us.

NOTE — I’m reading all the Bible this year. For those who want to read along, tomorrow’s Daily Lesson will be from Job chapters 17-20.