When our believing friends experience calamity and tragedy, how do we respond?

When our believing friends experience calamity and tragedy, how do we respond?

Of all the books of the Bible, none is more reality-jolting than the book of Job. Job was a man of integrity. He served God faithfully, and God himself called him “upright.” Due to a challenge from Satan, God allowed the devil to ruin Job financially, to destroy his reputation, to kill his children, and to take his health. Job was as down as a man can be, yet he never cursed God.

Job had some advisors who had never experienced such calamity, and they falsely assumed that Job must be at fault since God would never allow such things to happen to an innocent man. They further entreated Job to confess his unnamed sin! Job cried out to God and questioned him, but he also spoke truth about his own integrity.

When this all shakes out, we find that God was angry at Job’s counselors, because in their effort to defend God, they had spoken falsely. Job, while questioning God, spoke accurately.

In Job. 42:7-9, we see this: After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job shall pray foryou, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” So Eliphazthe Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the Lord had told them, and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.

When our friends experience unexplained calamity, our call is to love them, hear them, and be there for them. It is in these times we prove ourselves to be either agents of God’s healing, or else false witnesses of things we can’t explain. Between Jesus’ victory on the cross, his resurrection, and his ascension on the one hand, and his return that we await on the other hand, we continue to live in a fallen world. Given that reality, let us heed God’s counsel and choose to laugh with those who laugh, but also weep with those who weep. In these times, we hold each other up as God does his sovereign, often mystifying, yet perfect work in each of us who belong to him.

In Christ,

Chris