After preaching on the book of Job one Sunday, a member of the church came up to me and told me a Joke. He asked if I knew why Job had such a bad time sleeping at night. I told him that I didn’t, and he replied, “It’s because he had such miserable comforters.” Take a minute! Well, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Elihu, Job’s friends, were definitely miserable comforters. They began their dissertations on “Retribution Theology” in Chapter 4 and continued through most of the rest of the book. Eventually, God gets tired of it all and speaks on behalf of Job. Their finger-pointing and caustic remarks contribute even more to Job’s suffering. In his first reply to them, he addresses their lack of kindness and consideration at the time he needs it most. He says to them in Job 6:14, “He who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty.”
Like Job, when we suffer, we don’t need a theological dissertation on God’s goodness nor a rational explanation of our situation. No, we need comfort. We need kindness. We need compassion and understanding. Once, during Queen Victoria’s reign, she heard that the wife of a common laborer had lost her baby. Having experienced deep sorrow herself, she felt moved to express her sympathy. So she called on the bereaved woman one day and spent some time with her. After she left, the neighbors asked what the queen had said. “Nothing,” replied the grieving mother. “She simply put her hands on mine, and we silently wept together.” This is the kind of thing we all need when we suffer.
After all the suffering that Israel had endured, God tells Isaiah in 40:1 to “comfort, comfort ye, my people.” It is the prophetic proclamation regarding the coming of the Messiah, who will do just that. Jesus never pointed his fingers at sinners; rather, he turned pointed fingers back at the ones pointing them and said things like, “Let the one without any sin cast the first stone.” He never rejected the defiled but touched and healed them. He fed the hungry and gave sight to the blind and sound to the deaf. He never turned away the hurting, but he comforted and restored them. He never condemns the sinner. He saves them. Job dumped his pain on his friends in Chapter Three. They responded with accusations and theological discussions. They could not personally identify with his suffering. They had not suffered like Job. But Jesus is the one person who will never preach a theological treatise when we dump our hurt on him. Regardless of the reason for our suffering, he will open his arms wide, take your hand, and weep with you. You see, Isaiah 53:3 describes Jesus for us who need a comforter in all our sufferings. “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief.”