You're probably familiar with the story of Job, at least in broad outlines. Job is the person in the Bible who had all kinds of terrible things happen, yet refused to give up on God. He was upset with God, he questioned God, he thought God was not being fair with him, but he would not give up on God.
When you read the story, it's almost funny the way Job finds out about all the disasters that happen. He's sitting around one day, minding his own business, and a guy comes up to him and tells him that his donkeys had been stolen and his servants who were watching them were killed. “While he was still speaking”, another guy comes and tells him his sheep and the servants watching them were all burned in a fire. “While he was still speaking”, another guy comes and tells him his camels have been stolen and the servants watching them were killed. “While he was still speaking”, another guy comes and tells him his sons and daughters have all been killed. In other words, Job find out about all these disasters in the space of about five minutes.
I read that, and I think, “There's no way someone could have all those things happen that quickly.” On the other hand....
The other day, I was sitting in my office and found out that a friend of mine had a death in his family. About an hour later, I found out that another friend had lost lots of property in a fire. About fifteen minutes later, I found out that another friend of mine had a family emergency. About a half hour after that, I found out that another friend of mine had a health crisis. I found out about all these things in the space of about two hours.
Now, I understand that none of these things happened personally to me, but still. It was a lot of bad things happening to people I know in a very short period of time.
When stuff like this happens, we want to do something. Not because I'm a pastor, not because I'm a Christian, but just because I'm a human being. When bad things happen to people, especially to people we know, we want to do something to help.
The trouble is that, in so many situations, it seems like there's nothing we can do. We can pray, of course, and obviously I think that's something, but sometimes it doesn't really feel like something. We want to do something tangible. We want to do something where we can actually see that we're helping. And sometimes, we just can't.
I don't have the answer to this, but I'd like to make a couple of suggestions. For one, sometimes what we can do is just let people know we're there. Keep in contact. Call once in a while. Send an email. If we know them well enough, drop by. Just make sure they know that we know what's going on, that we care, and that we're still there for them. Make sure they know that, whatever they're going through, they don't have to go through it alone.
The other thing we can do is remember that, even when bad things happen, God is still there. You and I aren't supposed to do everything. We're just supposed to do everything we can. Once we've done everything we can, we need to step back and let God do what God does.
That may sound simplistic. I don't mean it to be. It can be hard to step back and wait for God to do what God does. Often, we think we know what God should do, and we think God should do it now. It's hard to accept it when God does not seem to agree with us.
We don't know what God will do. We don't know when God will do it. That's where our faith comes into it. If we've done everything we can, we need to have faith that God will take care of the rest. We need to trust that what God does will be the right thing, and that when God does it will be the right time.
It's still hard to see people hurting. But God has promised to never forsake us. We need to trust that. If we really have faith, and if we've really done everything we can do, then we can leave the rest in God's hands, confident that there are no better hands in which it could be.
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