Last week I talked with a friend who's seen an unbelievable series of catastrophes hit the folks who work with him.  There was the seven-year old son who felt woozy and was dead of a seizure before he arrived at the hospital.  There was the 24-year-old daughter who was vacationing in Spain and was swept out to sea by a rogue wave as she played on the beach.  There was the young leader who woke up blind in one eye from a stroke, who lay face-down for five agonizing weeks in the hope of some of the sight returning, to no avail.  And there were the three other similar stories, all in the last few months.

It's been a rough few months in my world as well, so I asked my friend what he'd learned through this astounding series of tragedies and traumas.  He had quite a bit to say.

First, he'd learned to speak less than he would have previously.  He was among the first to be called in each of these cases, and he said that-after the fourth or fifth of these calls-he learned to listen and listen some more.  He had a bit of perspective from the Bible on this: "Job's friends did all right until they started to speak."  When Job's friends just silently sat in the dust and ashes with their suffering friend, it seemed to my friend that they were on the right track.

Didn't he feel compelled to offer some perspective to these folks?  No, he said, he didn't.  Well-meaning churchgoing friends had talked to the parents of the suddenly-taken kids and had suggested that what had happened was an attack of the devil, but both sets of parents had quickly rejected that sentiment.  Perhaps, my friend suggested, they didn't like living in a world so susceptible to sudden demonic raids.  But it seemed noteworthy, in any case, that that quick and boldly-stated interpretation wasn't helpful to them.

If he didn't have any advice to these folks who were suffering (beyond sitting with them and every now and again tentatively offering the occasional thought that perhaps was from God), what might he suggest folks do who wanted to help or comfort friends who were going through things of this nature?  To that, he had some immediate advice: Pray!  At that level, whether you were praying against the devil's evil work or praying that God would show himself to be powerful didn't make much difference to my friend.  When you're praying, evidently you can't go wrong.

Had he gained anything from being a first responder to all these tragedies?

Yes, he reflected, he had.  Maybe his experience shed some perspective on the apostle Paul's frequent commenting on his own immense suffering.  Maybe it was Paul's hanging in there through all that awfulness that gave him the spiritual power he had, the kind of power that could help people at the deepest levels.  Whatever the folks Paul cared for had gone through, almost certainly he had gone through more.  And so he could offer genuine, well-earned wisdom to these folks.  But perhaps he could also offer a kind of supernatural helpfulness that God can only entrust to those who've endured this manner of spiritual test.

And then my friend counseled me, pastor that I am.

Evidently, he said, God doesn't take away each of our horrible problems, though he could, and though he sometimes does.  At that point, perhaps the thing we learn is to keep walking through the grief towards a God who is there nonetheless.  Perhaps our slow-to-advise, but never-failingly supportive friends can walk right beside us and help us feel so much more encouraged as a result.  And perhaps together we can learn whatever it is that we can learn.