SERIES: The Book of Job
How to Comfort a Broken Heart
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: Most people are not known for their compassion and caring these days. In Stockholm Sweden last year a woman sat for two months on her balcony from about the first of January until the first of March before a neighbor discovered she was dead. The woman was sitting in a chair, dressed in a coat and hat. Her forehead was leaning against the railing. Margaretha Marsellas, a neighbor, realized something was wrong when she saw the woman sitting on her balcony around the clock, despite freezing temperatures, but she didn’t know whether she should “get involved.”
A similar thing happened just a year ago in Key West, Florida (April 30, 1992). A 78-year-old man thought his roommate was ignoring him and didn’t realize the other man had been dead on the kitchen floor for two months. Thomas Warren told police that he recalled William Delaney falling in the kitchen several months earlier. He said he had often asked Delaney afterwards if he wanted food or drink or if he needed to go to the hospital, but he was very stubborn and wouldn’t answer him. Then on the front page of yesterday’s St. Louis Post Dispatch was a story about a widow and her son found dead in their home in Madison—probably dead for six months before anyone checked on them.
Now these are bizarre examples of a disease that is spreading in our society. One might call it the “you-got-your-problems-I-got-mine” syndrome. It reminds me of a report I read: “I came across a lady in New York’s Central Park just after she had been mugged. She was a mess—her dress torn, glasses broken, face badly bruised, knee cut, handbag stolen. I asked if she would like me to call a cop. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to get involved.”
It’s not always that we don’t care; it’s more often the fact that we’re too busy or just don’t know what to say or do. We are all confronted with situations that stretch us. Your best friend comes over to tell you that her husband has just announced out of the clear blue that he no longer loves her and is seeking an emergency divorce. Your neighbors lose their only child to leukemia at the age of three. Another friend at church loses his job at the same time a slew of other tragedies strikes his family. You’re called upon as a friend. What do you say to a broken, bleeding heart? How do you help? How do you make sure you don’t make matters worse by some inadvertent action or remark?
If you’ve never faced such a situation, you will. There are tragedies all around us. Part of our duty as members of a Body of believers is to reach out and touch one another, but we have not always done it well. In fact, for many people comfort is a lost art, except for choosing a greeting card. As I look back on nearly 20 years of pastoral ministry, I see my own mistakes in this regard only too well. I have often been too verbal, had too many answers, shown too little compassion.
We’ve been studying the life of Job. He was a blameless and upright man, one who feared God and turned away from evil. Because of his great integrity, God bragged about him to Satan, who in turn accused God of stacking the deck by granting to Job enormous wealth, thus buying him off. Satan predicted that if the protective hedge around Job were to vanish, Job’s faith would likewise vanish, and he would curse God to His face.
For reasons we don’t fully understand, God accepted Satan’s challenge and removed the protective hedge. In a very brief time Job lost all his wealth, lost his ten children, lost his health, and lost his wife’s support. He was a broken, poverty-stricken, grief-ridden, miserable man. Never has anyone been called to a more formidable task than to comfort this broken heart. Nevertheless, three noble souls felt called to this ministry: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. A fourth, who perhaps arrived later (or at least isn’t heard from until chapter 32) is Elihu the Buzite.
These four characters have received a lot of bad press from preachers. And they deserve much of it, for as we will see over the next month, with friends like these turned out to be, Job didn’t need any enemies. But I think we should not overlook the fact that they started out well, and their task was extremely difficult. Perhaps the best approach for us is to realize there are lessons we can learn from them, both negative and positive.
I would like to share with you today seven principles relating to comforting the broken-hearted. Job’s friends are good examples in respect to 3 or 4 of these and very bad examples for the rest. Our hope is that in the process of this study we will not only progress in our study of the Book of Job but also gain some valuable insight in how to help the hurting. And if you are hurting this morning, I trust you will find some comfort for yourself. The first principle, both chronologically and in importance, is to …
Demonstrate love and compassion.
The opening verse in today’s text (2:11) says a lot: “When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him.” That in itself demonstrates significant sacrifice. Most people choose to sympathize in the comfort of their own homes, perhaps making a phone call or sending a card. But not these men. They took time out of their own busy lives and traveled (perhaps a long distance) to be with Job. They weren’t summoned; no one put them on a guilt trip; they simply heard and came.
When they arrived, they had good reason to turn around and go back home, for they find Job sitting on the ash heap (2:8), or the town garbage dump, and he looked so awful they didn’t even recognize him at first. It would have been easy to allow his surroundings and his revolting appearance to provide excuses for going back home. But they didn’t. In fact, they sat on the ground with him right there in the garbage dump for seven days and seven nights. That’s compassion.
The experts tell us that most of us have a natural tendency to avoid contact with the sorrowing, the grieving, and the dying. This is especially true of those who need comfort over a long period of time or those who don’t respond positively when we first reach out. Some people who are going through the grief process respond with anti-social behavior. Job is perhaps a case in point, as he didn’t even acknowledge the presence of his friends for seven days. But sometimes the anti-social behavior shows up—not in silence, but in anger, bitterness, and a critical spirit. In such cases it’s doubly hard to show love and compassion, but that’s when it’s doubly needed. Maybe the person doesn’t want to be anti-social, but they find it very difficult to respond in any other way.
To minister to such a person, one must be willing to be vulnerable, willing to have one’s love and compassion go unreciprocated, and willing to see one’s motives misjudged. A lady I know who is a beautiful example in reaching out to hurting people, put it this way: “If you’re going to meet needs you’ve got to love the unlovable.” All of us need that kind of attitude. Can you think of some practical ways love and compassion can be shown? How about …
an invitation to Sunday dinner,
an offer to keep the children for an afternoon,
taking a fatherless child to the fair along with your own children,
sending an encouragement card—no special occasion, “Just thinking about you,”
dropping by just to talk,
taking a loaf of bread,
buying something practical they perhaps can’t afford,
going shopping with the person.
Someone has said, “Time heals grief. Love prevents scar tissue from forming.” But while we are showing love and compassion to a broken heart, we must be careful not to smother the person.
Allow the person to grieve.
We mentioned last week that when Job lost everything he had, he tore his robe and shaved his head—typical responses of grief in his day. This was perfectly appropriate in that God’s Word never suggests that we repress emotions of grief. Job’s three friends allowed him to grieve. The last verse of chapter two says, “Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him because they saw how great his suffering was.”
Have you ever said to a hurting person, “There now, don’t cry!”? Why shouldn’t they cry? Why should they sit at the funeral of a loved one, not daring to sob outloud because of what people might think? Why should they be afraid to share the depression they feel at not being able to find a job? Since when was Christianity a stepchild to Stoicism? As a matter of fact, Jesus said, “Blessed are they that mourn….”
The grief process takes time, and there are generally several stages to it. Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, a Swiss-born psychiatrist who is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on death and dying, has suggested that terminal patients (and their families) almost always go through five stages of grief. These stages seem to be almost as common for those going through other kinds of sorrow or tragedy.
Stage 1: denial. “Not me! These sorts of things happen to other people, but not me.”
Stage 2: anger or resentment. “Why me? Why my child? What did I do to deserve this?”
Stage 3: bargaining. “Yes, me, but … if you get me out of this, Lord, I’ll….”
Stage 4: depression. “Yes, me.” Hope is gone.
Stage 5: acceptance. “Yes.”
I’m not sure which stage of grief Job is in when he delivers his first speech in chapter 3—probably in the depression stage. We hear him lament the day of his birth (1-10), wish aloud that he had been born dead (11-19), and long to die now (20-26). I think we should read this chapter to grasp the depth of his pain.
After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. 2 He said:
3 “May the day of my birth perish,
and the night that said, ‘A boy is conceived!’
4 That day—may it turn to darkness;
may God above not care about it;
may no light shine on it.
5 May gloom and utter darkness claim it once more;
may a cloud settle over it;
may blackness overwhelm it.
6 That night—may thick darkness seize it;
may it not be included among the days of the year
nor be entered in any of the months.
7 May that night be barren;
may no shout of joy be heard in it.
8 May those who curse days curse that day,
those who are ready to rouse Leviathan.
9 May its morning stars become dark;
may it wait for daylight in vain
and not see the first rays of dawn,
10 for it did not shut the doors of the womb on me
to hide trouble from my eyes.
11 “Why did I not perish at birth,
and die as I came from the womb?
12 Why were there knees to receive me
and breasts that I might be nursed?
13 For now I would be lying down in peace;
I would be asleep and at rest
14 with kings and rulers of the earth,
who built for themselves places now lying in ruins,
15 with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver.
16 Or why was I not hidden away in the ground like a stillborn child,
like an infant who never saw the light of day?
17 There the wicked cease from turmoil,
and there the weary are at rest.
18 Captives also enjoy their ease;
they no longer hear the slave driver’s shout.
19 The small and the great are there,
and the slaves are freed from their owners.
20 “Why is light given to those in misery,
and life to the bitter of soul,
21 to those who long for death that does not come,
who search for it more than for hidden treasure,
22 who are filled with gladness
and rejoice when they reach the grave?
23 Why is life given to a man
whose way is hidden,
whom God has hedged in?
24 For sighing has become my daily food;
my groans pour out like water.
25 What I feared has come upon me;
what I dreaded has happened to me.
26 I have no peace, no quietness;
I have no rest, but only turmoil.”
Sure, Job’s not being totally rational when he says some of these things. Sure, he’s lost sight momentarily of his dignity and value as an individual created in the image of God. He’s even lost that unshakable confidence he demonstrated back in 1:21. But he’s hurting; he’s in pain; his insides are twisted in knots; and he’s just being honest with how he feels. We should not be overly critical. I think it is possible for us to find comfort from the Scriptures, not only from the brilliant and lofty theological arguments of the Apostle Paul as found in Romans 8 and other places, but also in the honest complaints of Jeremiah, the nasty denunciations of the imprecatory Psalms, and the painful and plaintive cries of Job.
God never asks us to fake it, and we shouldn’t ask the grieving person to fake it. Job’s kind of honesty does not turn God off but rather brings Him near. And it may hasten the healing process. Being brave, on the other hand, putting up a front, and pretending we have no problems may delay healing. Allow the hurting to grieve.
There’s something, however, that’s better yet than allowing a person to sorrow and grieve, and that’s our third principle:
Grieve with them.
To me the most beautiful thing about Job’s three friends is found in verse 12: “When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads.” You say, “some committee of cheer these guys are!” But Job doesn’t need cheer right now; he needs understanding. He needs to know that others hurt with him.
I recall an incident when one dear family was going through a particularly difficult time of sorrow and grief. One person said to me, “I’d like to go over to see them, but I’m afraid I’d just end up bawling.” So what? Maybe that’s the best thing you could do is to go and cry with them, so long as it is sincere. The shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35: “Jesus wept.” Why did He weep? Well, at least in part because His friends were weeping. He grieved with them. In ancient times one could hire professional mourners who would come over to one’s house, and for a flat rate they would cry and moan and grovel around in the dirt. If a person was fortunate, he would have friends willing to do it for nothing. I am troubled that in our society relatively few people attend most funerals, even for close acquaintances, despite the fact the Apostle Paul urged us to “Rejoice with those that do rejoice and weep with those that weep.” (Romans 12:15)
So far it has been suggested that in ministering to the broken-hearted we should demonstrate love and compassion, allow the person to grieve, and grieve with him.
Listen.
We Americans are embarrassed by silence. If there’s an unnatural pause in a conversation, we hasten to fill the gap with the first thing that comes to mind. If we’re involved in group prayer, we often consider the pauses as wasted time. And when we go to comfort the hurting, we feel that we’ve got to talk all the time to get the person’s mind off his troubles. Job’s friends didn’t feel that way, at least initially. They sat in silence for seven days and seven nights and then listened as Job began to share the emotional struggle he was going through (chapter 3). They didn’t interrupt him either.
A Christian psychiatrist has suggested that Job’s friends missed the opportunity to go down in the Counselor’s Hall of Fame as uniquely sensitive and understanding at this very point. He says, “They sat on the ground with him for seven days and nights, and they didn’t say a word, because they saw how utterly grief-stricken he was. But then they began to talk and spoiled it all.”
And talk they did! For 34 chapters they talked, and the more they talked, the more Job hurt. Dr. Joseph Bayly is a well-known Christian leader who has lost three sons—Danny, John, and Joe—in separate accidents or illnesses at age 1, 5, and 18. In his very simple and direct style he shares with us the importance of listening:
“I was sitting, torn by grief. Someone came and talked to me of God’s dealings, of why it may have happened, of hope beyond the grave. He talked constantly and said things I knew were true. I was unmoved, except to wish he’d go away. He finally did.
Another came and sat beside me. He didn’t talk. He didn’t ask leading questions. He just sat beside me for an hour or more, listened when I said something, answered briefly, prayed simply, left. I was moved. I was comforted. I hated to see him go.”[i]
Friends, there’s no place in the house of grief for our heavy theological artillery, at least not at first. We just need to listen! Why do you think it is that the true believer finds such great comfort at a time of trial in the presence of God? Could it be because God is just there, not badgering us with guilt-producing memories, or demanding of us immediate responses of maturity, or hitting us over the head with great doctrinal truths? He listens. And we are comforted.
Help the person find forgiveness (if needed).
The “if needed” is in parenthesis for good reason, which I will explain in a moment. It’s amazing how many people who are sorrowing, grieving, or hurting because of tragedies in their lives are also at the same time struggling under a load of guilt. Sometimes the guilt is more unbearable than the tragedy itself.
Let’s think about some examples. A 25-year marriage breaks up. The wife moves out and announces that she’s found someone else and is going to remarry as soon as the divorce is final. The husband is devastated as his whole world begins to crumble before his eyes. Then in the process of asking, “why?,” he is confronted with the fact that 95% of his time and 99% of his emotional energy had gone into his business. Once the children left home, he and his wife were strangers living in the same house. He is wracked with guilt knowing that just a little restructuring of his priorities might have prevented it from happening.
Or a parent loses a child to a drug overdose. The tragedy is overwhelming, but the knot that never leaves the stomach is caused by the knowledge that the parent had failed to set proper limits as far as the child’s friends and associations were concerned. Or maybe the parent had failed to communicate with the child enough to know that peer pressure was mounting. Or possibly they simply failed to do a proper job of spiritual nurture.
Or a family goes broke, loses their home, and the children aren’t able to start college. Both mother and father realize the reason it happened is that they spent more than they made and wasted it on lots of things they didn’t need. They feel an overwhelming sense of guilt.
If you are called upon to comfort someone struggling with a tragedy compounded by knowledge that their own failure produced the tragedy, then what is needed more than anything else is help in finding forgiveness. They need to be told that no failure and no sin is too great for God to forgive, other than the refusal to seek and accept His forgiveness. Moses was a murderer; David was a murderer, an adulterer, a liar, a coveter; Paul was a murderer and a blasphemer; Peter was a traitor, Rahab a prostitute, Jacob a deceiver—yet they all found forgiveness in the grace of God.
When the Prophet Nathan came to King David both to point out his sin and to tell him the tragic consequences of it, consequences that would affect the entire course of his life, Nathan also told him, “The Lord has taken away your sin.” (2 Samuel 12:13) And David believed that and responded to it in the 51st Psalm: “Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned,’ he prayed, ‘and done that which is evil in Thy sight…. Create in me a clean heart, of God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
No one is more pitiable than the one who is suffering terribly because of sin, but who nevertheless refuses to confess it or repent. But may God help us to see that not all guilt connected with tragedy is legitimate. And part of our comforting ministry is to help alleviate that unnecessary soul-searching that some are so prone to do, as we see in our next principle.
Help alleviate illegitimate guilt.
This is where Job’s three friends failed most miserably. If he suffered from illegitimate guilt, his friends certainly did nothing to alleviate it. Instead, the one consistent theme they emphasized through all their speeches from chapter 4 to 38 is that Job must be guilty or this wouldn’t have happened to him. They don’t alleviate unnecessary guilt—they heap it on and try to force it down his throat.
It’s cruel. It’s inhumane. And it’s so unnecessary. Most Christians, in my estimation, are as prone to blame themselves for tragedies that weren’t their fault as they are to avoid blame for those that were their fault. I think the reason for this is that Satan, when he can’t annihilate our conscience, finds equal success in doing just the opposite—getting our consciences to work overtime. Either way we end up defeated.
What Job needed more than anything else was for a friend to say to him, “Job, I don’t understand what has happened to you anymore than you do, but you have been such a beautiful example of a godly man that I just want you to know that I believe in you.”
Whenever there’s a death in one’s family, there’s likely to be some of this unnecessary soul-searching going on. “Why didn’t I call my aged father more often?” “Why did I let my mother stay in a nursing home her last two years—she was so lonely.” I recall the tragic story of a coyote which ventured into a yard in the mountains above Los Angeles and carried off a 3-year-old girl and killed her. The parents went through terrible agony of guilt because they hadn’t watched the child more carefully.
But there is absolutely no way one can foresee and prepare for every possible tragedy. The aged mother, unhappy in the rest home, would probably acknowledge that she is where she should be if she were rational. The elderly father would admit to being quite satisfied with two phone calls a month. People suffering from illegitimate guilt need to hear a reassuring word, like, “Hey you did what any of us would have done in similar circumstances. There was no way you could know. You did all that could be expected.”
There’s another kind of false guilt that people sometimes suffer from, not in spite of the comfort offered by Christian friends, but directly because of it. And that’s the guilt produced by well-meaning people who teach that health and prosperity are promised to the faithful unconditionally. All that is needed is more faith. Joe Bayly, whom I mentioned earlier, writes,
“The summer after our eighteen-year-old son died our sixteen-year-old daughter was at a Christian camp. A visiting minister told this grieving girl, ‘Your brother need not have died, if your parents had only had faith for his healing. It is not God’s will for one to die before old age.’ When our daughter told us this in a letter, I thought about one who died in His early thirties, one who loved children enough not to hurt them.”[ii]
Finally, there is one principle that sort of caps off all the others. It is not a substitute for the others, but the others are incomplete if this is not done.
Tell the person about the God who cares.
Now I didn’t say, “Tell them all you know about God.” I didn’t say, “Discuss predestination and foreknowledge with them and be sure to quote Rom. 8:28: ‘All things work together for good to them that love God.’” I didn’t say to “recite all the attributes of God.”
Just tell them about the God who cares. Had Job’s friends spent a little less time talking of God’s transcendence and His justice and His righteousness, and a little more about His love and care and concern, they might have been comforters in deed, as well as in word.
Conclusion: Friends, our hymnbooks contain a lot of songs about comfort and compassion. Some are good and some are not. I think of a song we all know, “Trust and Obey.” Listen to the second verse:
“Not a shadow can rise,
Not a cloud in the skies,
But His smile quickly drives it away.
Not a doubt nor a fear,
Not a sigh nor a tear,
Can abide while we trust and obey.”
How does Job fit into that?
Or here’s another old favorite:
“Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged, Take it to the Lord in prayer.”
Friends, I’m sure the motivation of the one who wrote those lyrics was good, but his theology was weak. How much better is this hymnwriter’s message:
“Does Jesus care when my heart is pained too deeply for mirth and song;
As the burdens press, and the cares distress,
And the way grows weary and long.
O yes, He cares; I know He cares, His heart is touched with my grief;
When the days are weary, the long nights dreary, I know my Savior cares.
Does Jesus care when I’ve said ‘good-bye’ to the dearest on earth to me,
And my sad heart aches till it nearly breaks,
Is it aught to Him? Does He see?
O yes, He cares; I know He cares, His heart is touched with my grief;
When the days are weary, the long nights dreary, I know my Savior cares.”
Jesus cares. He cared enough to surrender His glory in Heaven to become one of us. He cared enough to live a perfect life, rejecting every temptation and fulfilling every one of the Law’s demands. He cared enough to die in our place that we might receive eternal life. He cared enough to send His Holy Spirit to serve as our Comforter. We also must care. May God help us to live our faith in the way we respond to hurting people around us.
DATE: June 20, 1993
Tags:
Compassion
Grief
Forgiveness
Guilt
[i] Joe Bayley, The View from a Hearse,
[ii] Bayley,