Helping the Hurting (dated 8/23/12)

by Richard Edfeldt

After Jacob's death, Karen created this blog to record insights in her grief journey.  I would periodically write my insights on notes posted to my Facebook page.  We feel it would be best served if we combined our efforts so I am beginning the process of copying those notes to this blog.  They won't be in chronological order but I will put the original date on each one.

I recently came across this excerpt from a booklet called “Helping the Hurting” by Philip Yancey. I found it both insightful and instructional. Take a look:

I believe we in the body of Christ are called to show love when God seems not to. People in pain, especially those with long-term pain, often have the sensation that God has left them. No one expressed this better than C. S. Lewis in the poignant journal he kept about his wife’s death (A Grief Observed). He recorded that at the moment of his most profound need, God, who had seemed always available to him, suddenly seemed distant and absent, as if God had slammed a door shut and double-bolted it from the inside. Sometimes we must voice prayers that the suffering person cannot voice. And in moments of extreme pain or grief, very often God’s love can only be perceived through the flesh of ordinary people like you and me. In such a way we can, indeed, function as the body of Jesus Christ.

To many, they may find that Yancey conveys some surprising words, except to those who have experienced or who are in the midst of experiencing the deafening silence of God.  If you have been brought up in the church, you have been taught to believe that God is always a prayer away. And in technical terms, I guess that’s correct.  However, I can attest from personal experience, similar to C. S. Lewis’ recollections, that in times of deepest stress or distress, there is that distinct feeling that we have been shoved out the door and hear that sickening sound of the door locking and being double-bolted.  And as we pound on the door for re-admittance, pleading for God’s voice and intervention, all we hear is our own sobbing.

Those times are times of bewilderment, times of introspective doubting, times of anguish and of anger, and times of self imposed ostracism from our support system. We feel deserted by God and abandoned by others. So Yancey is point on in his description of where people are in times of extreme and/or extended times of pain.

But Yancey also provides some wonderful words of instruction to those who are witnessing friends or loved ones that are wandering in a spiritual desert. In those times when we can’t, won’t, or refuse to see God and His love – you who are a part of the body of Christ can be the representation of God and His brilliant love to those of us who are in a season of darkness. Through your expressions of concern, actions of love, words that provide encouragement (but are not explanations of why or of unintended judgment), or just by giving your mere presence, you help us experience the touch of God that we so desperately need but often times resist and you can voice the prayers that have gone silent from our lips. Through your faith, you can begin to restore faith to those who’s faith has been fractured or devastated.

And in those times, we who are in pain may not say the words, but we are very thankful to those special friends and family for helping us experience the body of Christ.