How do we comfort those who suffer?

Question 60112.

Those who suffer are usually surrounded, at least at first, by people who want to help and have no idea how. I have watched kind Christians make a bereavement worse with a sentence, and I have said things at gravesides in my twenties that I would give a good deal to take back.

So this is a practical article rather than a theological one. What actually helps, what actively harms, and what Scripture models when it comes to sitting with people in the worst weeks of their lives.

What Job’s Friends Got Right

We use their name as an insult, and the first thing they did was almost perfect. They heard what had happened, and they came. They travelled from three different places and arranged to arrive together, which took organisation and cost them time.

When they saw him they wept aloud, tore their robes and sat down with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, because they saw that his suffering was very great. Seven days of silent presence. Most of us manage about seven minutes before we start filling the gap.

That is the model, and it is worth sitting with. The comfort those who suffer most often need is not information. It is company that does not flinch and does not leave. See Job 2:13.

Where They Went Wrong

Then they opened their mouths, and thirty five chapters of trouble followed. Their error was not a lack of theology; a good deal of what they said is true in the abstract and one of their lines is quoted approvingly in the New Testament. There is more on the book itself at what about Job’s suffering. Their error was applying general truth to a particular man whose situation they did not understand.

They had a system: suffering follows sin, therefore Job must have sinned. So they moved from gentle hints to open accusation, and by the end Eliphaz is inventing specific crimes to explain the evidence. That is what happens when a framework meets a case it cannot fit and the framework wins.

God’s verdict at the end is worth hearing. He tells Eliphaz that His anger burns against him and his two friends, because they have not spoken of Him what is right, as His servant Job has. Job, who had accused God of injustice, spoke rightly. The men who defended God spoke wrongly.

What Not to Say

There is a standard list, and it is standard because these things are said constantly. Everything happens for a reason. God needed another angel. At least you had him for twenty years. God will not give you more than you can handle, which is not in the Bible at all and is a misreading of a verse about temptation.

All things work together for good is in the Bible, and it is true, and it is almost always the wrong sentence at the wrong moment. Romans 8 is written to a church under pressure as a settled confidence, not as a conversational lid to put on somebody’s grief three days in.

The common feature of all these lines is that they exist to end the conversation. They make the speaker more comfortable and leave those who suffer more alone. If you notice yourself reaching for one, it is usually a sign that you want the discomfort to stop.

Simply Being With Those Who Suffer

What helps, overwhelmingly, is showing up and staying. Not with a speech prepared. Not with a book to lend. Just being there, repeatedly, over months rather than days.

Practical help is the most concrete form this takes, and it is undervalued because it feels too ordinary to count. I have written more about the particular case of bereavement at Christian grief and about supporting a friend through it at helping a grieving friend. Cook something. Do the school run. Mow the lawn. Answer the phone calls they cannot face. Handle the paperwork that arrives after a death, which is relentless and cruel in its timing.

And keep coming back. The rush of support lasts a fortnight and then stops, which is roughly when the shock wears off and the real grief starts. Diary it. Put a reminder in your phone for six months’ time, and again for the first anniversary, and be one of the very few people who remembers.

Learning to Listen

Listening is harder than it sounds because the instinct to fix is so strong. But those who suffer often need to tell the story many times, and each retelling does something. Let them. Do not finish their sentences or correct their theology while they are talking.

Weep with those who weep, says Romans 12:15, and notice that it does not say explain to those who weep. Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus knew He was about to raise him, and He still wept. The shortest verse in the Bible is a lesson in pastoral care.

Ask open questions and be prepared for anger, including anger at God. Do not defend Him. He is not in danger, and a person shouting at God is a person still talking to Him, which is a great deal better than the alternative.

When to Speak, and What to Say

There does come a time for words, and I am not counselling permanent silence. The rule of thumb is that comfort comes before explanation, presence before argument, and questions before answers. Usually the sufferer will open the door themselves, and you will know.

When that happens, keep it short and keep it about God rather than about their situation. God is not indifferent to this. He entered suffering Himself. He has promised to put it right. He is near to the broken hearted. Each of those is true, defensible, and short enough to be heard.

Do not claim to know why this happened, because you do not. The most honest and often most comforting sentence available to you is I do not know, and I am not going anywhere.

Comforting Out of What You Received

Paul gives the theology of this in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, and it reframes the whole business. God comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

That means your own hard years are not wasted material. The people who help those who suffer best are almost never the ones with the best answers; they are the ones who have been in a similar pit and came out without pretending it was easy.

It also means you do not need to have suffered identically to be useful. Comfort is transferable in a way that explanation is not, and a person who knows what it is to sit in the dark can sit with somebody else in a different dark without saying very much at all.

Jesus With Those Who Suffer

It is worth watching how Jesus handled grief, because He did not follow the rules we tend to impose on ourselves. At the tomb of Lazarus He was deeply moved and He wept, knowing perfectly well what He was about to do.

That is worth sitting with. If ever anyone had grounds to skip the grieving and go straight to the good news, it was Him on that afternoon. He wept anyway. The resurrection did not cancel the sorrow; it followed it.

So a Christian who feels obliged to hurry those who suffer towards hope has misread the pattern. There is a time for hope and it is real, and it does not require anybody to stop crying first. See John 11:33-35.

Practical Notes for the Long Haul

A few specifics, gathered over years of getting this wrong. Do not ask if there is anything you can do, because the answer will always be no; say what you are going to do and then do it. Do not disappear because you are afraid of saying the wrong thing, since absence says something far worse.

Remember the dates. Birthdays, anniversaries and the first Christmas are the hardest, and they arrive when the support has thinned. A message on the anniversary saying you are thinking of them and remembering the person by name is worth more than almost anything you could have said in the first week.

And say the name. Those who suffer bereavement often find that everyone stops mentioning the person who died, as though they had been edited out. Being willing to speak about them, to laugh about them, to ask what they were like, is a gift very few people offer.

So, now what?

Think of one person you know who is in the middle of something at the moment, and do the unglamorous thing this week. Turn up. Bring food. Say nothing clever. Then diary a reminder for three months’ time, when everyone else has moved on and they have not.

And prepare yourself for the next time by deciding now what you will not say. Those who suffer will remember for the rest of their lives who came and who stayed away, and almost never what anyone said. Which would you rather be remembered as?

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (ESV)