Daily Lesson for August 30, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Job chapter 8 verses 1 through 7:

Then Bildad the Shuhite answered: 

2 ‘How long will you say these things,

   and the words of your mouth be a great wind? 

3 Does God pervert justice?

   Or does the Almighty pervert the right? 

4 If your children sinned against him,

   he delivered them into the power of their transgression. 

5 If you will seek God

   and make supplication to the Almighty,

6 if you are pure and upright,

   surely then he will rouse himself for you

   and restore to you your rightful place. 

7 Though your beginning was small,

   your latter days will be very great.

When friends suffer we find within ourselves a need to offer words of motivation and counsel and even rebuke against their questioning of God. 

But these really are our needs — not theirs. It’s about our need for control and making sense.  It’s about our need to protect God. 

But God doesn’t need protection. And our friends don’t need pious correction or promise — even if what is being said is in the Bible. 

Ten days his son Alex was killed in a terrible automobile accident, William Sloan Coffin preacher a sermon at his Riverside Church in New York in which he talked about how the truth of Scripture had been rendered “unreal” by the overwhelming sense of grief he was experiencing.  Words — even words of Scripture — fell cold and hollow.  Coffin said a person in grief needs something else other than words of consolation: 

“That's why immediately after such a tragedy people must come to your rescue, people who only want to hold your hand, not to quote anybody or even say anything, people who simply bring food and flowers — the basics of beauty and life — people who sign letters simply, "Your brokenhearted sister." In other words, in my intense grief I felt some of my fellow reverends — not many, and none of you, thank God — were using comforting words of Scripture for self-protection, to pretty up a situation whose bleakness they simply couldn't face. But like God herself, Scripture is not around for anyone's protection, just for everyone's unending support.”

When we set out to protect God, we’re really trying to protect ourselves. We’re trying to explain and make sense of things.  But some things just don’t make sense; and we can’t make them make sense either. 

Food, and flowers, and our own broken hearts. These are the things that we should bring.  And these things shall speak, even more than words.