Useful Pain

Two things stand out when I read the story of Job:

1. People talk about losing everything, and I have at times thought that I'd lost everything. Mostly we're exaggerating. Job is one of the few who actually knows what losing everything looks like, and when it happens it is spectacular and can't be mistaken for anything else.


2. Job's friends are jerks.

When Job was sinking headlong into the tarry morass of despair, his friends betrayed him. When he needed comfort they offered a reproach. When he needed people who loved him they told him that he was being punished for his sins. They were insensitive cads and deserved to be trampled by camels.

I can't fault them. Like Job's friends, I am at a loss when my friends are in pain. What were they supposed to do? They saw their friend in the wreckage of his life and couldn't say or do anything to restore to him what he had lost. They couldn't tell him everything would be okay; they couldn't tell him jokes to cheer him up; they couldn't tell him that they understood what he was going through. Had they said any of those things they would have deserved trampling by gangrenous sheep. And so, out of helplessness, they blamed him for his losses. What else could they do except to join him in a miserable, aching, useless silence?

Job was not the sole explorer of the far reaches of suffering. Others have been there, and Jesus Christ went deeper than anyone else. He gave his friends this advice:

Then saith He unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. (Matt 26:38)

I think of the Saviour as the fearless one who stared down mobs, commanded storms, and walked knowingly into the city where he would be condemned and executed. He had every virtue and infallible knowledge. He had penultimate authority. But even this man, who was more able than any other to stand alone, wished to have his friends with him as he entered into obliterating agony. It meant something to him that there were others who loved him just a little way off, and that they watched with him. It was important enough that he expressed disappointment when he turned to them and found them slumbering. In part he asked them to join their sympathy to his suffering out of concern for them, so that they would be protected from temptation (Mark 14:38, Luke 22:40). Even so, he would not have commanded them to pray for him were it not part of a principle that holds here as well as in eternity.

I am nothing. I am less than the dust of the earth, which makes me impressively bereft of importance. Even so, I have influence. God's commandments make it so. He commanded that we love one another, and when we obey he must bless us (D&C 130:21, D&C 82:10). The pain that comes to me through love of another is powerful because there is a God who loves these, my friends, more than I do. He sees my anguish and uses it to satisfy the law of obedience so that he can bless them. This is a true principle.

There is another principle that says those who dedicate themselves to following Christ are sent help and answers when they pray. They're obeying another commandment, that we must become like Christ (3 Ne 27:27). In your pain for the hurts of others you become an echo of the Saviour and his infinite atonement. Like him, you suffer out of love. In that moment of defenseless sorrow you become his disciple. His generous mercy falls upon you and the one you love because you are his. There is a beautiful economy of heaven here ensuring that pain from love is never wasted.

Job's friends should have chosen the silence. It would have been miserable and aching, yes, but not useless. In that silence they would have taken part in the mute and watchful service the Lord requires of his disciples. Their love and pain for Job would have become something lovely and powerful, wings that lifted them nearer to God. He would have smiled on their shared sorrow and answered their unspoken petitions for their wounded friend with infinite love and boundless mercy for them all. He stands waiting to do the same for me and mine. When I am at a loss and uncertain what to say or what to do, it is enough to accept the hurt and watch with my friend. This pain isn't redundant or wasted. My helpless silence is a prayer, and the Lord is listening.