Miserable Comforters

What miserable comforters you are!

Won’t you ever stop blowing hot air?

What makes you keep on talking?

I could say the same things if you were in my place.

I could spout off criticism and shake my head at you.

But if it were me, I would encourage you.

I would try to take away your grief. Job 16:2-5

THE PROBLEM WITH JOB’S FRIENDS who came around him in the midst of his hardship and despair wasn’t so much that what they said was wrong. Certainly much of what they said was right, good, and true, but much of it was wrongly applied and spoken at the wrong time. They made assumptions based on their beliefs that went beyond what they knew and squashed Job in the process. They decided they knew what God was doing, and they boiled down God’s ways into simplistic formulas that didn’t fit.

Certainly we hope that our children’s suffering will never rise to Job-worthy levels. But we can be sure it will sometimes seem that way to them. Pain can’t really be compared. It all just hurts to the person who is hurting. What we want is to be worthy comforters instead of worthless ones. We want to be quick to listen and slow to speak. We want to enter into their hurts and hear their hearts and be very slow to talk about it in ways that diminish their very real pain.

It is clear that Job’s friends had good intentions and were not out to make him feel worse. They wanted to help him. But instead they added to his misery. Likewise, we have good intentions with our kids. We want to help them. So we must be careful with our words and come alongside them rather than condescend. We must seek to enter into their disappointment and frustration rather than offer easy answers.

Lord, I want to be a genuine encourager to ________ in the hard places of life, not a miserable comforter. Silence me when it is time to be quiet. Humble me when I’m sure I’m right but my words are unhelpful. Give me a timely word fitly spoken.