Presence

  • First Feel the Pain

    Job knew the moves — he could make the fine speeches, shake his head with theological authority. He’d probably done it before his own dark season. But suffering taught him something he couldn’t unlearn: feel first, then speak. In Job 16:4–5 he says to his friends: if I were where you are, I’d choose differently. My words would bring relief, not more weight. Today’s devotional asks whether we’re the kind of people others feel safe bringing their pain to — or whether we move too quickly to fixing, explaining, and advising.

  • Presence Before Answers

    Job’s friends got it right for seven days — silence, presence, sitting on the ground with him. It went wrong the moment they opened their mouths. But here’s what this passage shows us: Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb before He raised him. God’s compassion is not a performance. He enters our pain before He speaks into it. And Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 1 that God comforts us so that we can comfort others with the same comfort we’ve received. You can only give what you’ve been given.