Job’s friends sat with him for seven days before opening their mouths. Too many Christians can’t go seven minutes without delivering a lecture that leaves a grieving person worse off.
Billy Crystal recently said he has stopped talking to God. “No, ’cause I don’t trust Him,” he said during an interview. His home burned in the Pacific Palisades fire, and his longtime friend Rob Reiner and Reiner’s wife, Michele, were murdered.
Suppose you were sitting across the table when he said it. What would you say?
We arrive at someone’s sorrow with conclusions before we’ve heard their story. We deliver our answers and leave. They’re still grieving, and now they may also feel guilty for struggling.
I asked that question on my radio program because someone we know may eventually trust us enough to say the same thing. A neighbor who buried a child. Someone who prayed beside a hospital bed and went home alone. Would we hear their anguish or immediately start preparing our answer?
I’ve spent 40 years caring for my wife, Gracie. Her suffering began before I met her. Over her lifetime, she has endured 98 operations and the loss of both legs. Along the way, people have told us what we should believe, how we should feel, and what God was evidently trying to accomplish. Some never acknowledged the weight of what we carried.
Rush Limbaugh used the phrase “drive-by media” to describe reporters who rushed into a story, stirred things up, and moved along, leaving others to deal with the damage. Are we in danger of engaging in drive-by ministry?
