"What do you know that we do not know? What insights do you have that we do not have? (Job 15:9)
Nothing like a little arrogance in problem solving. There is nothing more degrading than to talk with someone who already knows what needs to be known. Reading this time in Job, it came to me: What good did 40+ chapters of speculation do for Job and the 4 others?------- Nothing.
At first it seems as though Job's "friends" were really friends; they sat with him and said nothing. My Dad once said to me and a friend of mine that we "talk too much." We were obviously in a "save-the-planet" mode. I wonder how more people may be helped if more ministry, more counseling were to be of, "So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great."
Ephesians 5:4 speaks of, "foolish talking." That is apparently what we hear from the 4 would-be counselors in the Book of Job, because the Lord God condemns it all at the end of Job. Words are good, if rooted in, "The Word of God," Himself, Jesus. I also think that listening "hard" and long before saying something is also being a good friend.
Have you ever noticed in the Gospels how Jesus' listening, then perceiving was healing itself? He heard the blind man say, "Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me," but did our Lord Jesus perceive something more going on when he then asked, "What do you want me to do for you?" Later we read of Zacchaeus, who said nothing, but in his silence Jesus again perceived his loneliness. Can we say that Jesus never "assumed" anything?
The suffering of a lonely soul can be deep and potentially destructive. Perhaps the speculators' first "approach" to Job's suffering was the best.
Father, in Jesus' Name, help me to never be a, "miserable comforter[]." Amen.
When Peter, an 18 year old Norwegian, "heard the call to evangelize China, on that day he not only emptied his wallet into the collection plate, but included a small note with the words, 'and my life.'"
Hebrews 12:2
Hebrews 12:2
