Quick to Listen?

Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.
Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. --James 1:19; 5:16

You've probably been there. Someone corners you when you least expect it. There's urgency in the voice. Long-hidden pain erupts, and these words come forth: "Can we talk?"

Now comes the hard part. Mental gymnastics begin inside you. Automatically a flight response kicks in. Your mind jumps ahead, trying to steady yourself. You hope your beeper will sound. You fire off a hidden protest to God: why me? why now?

But wait, this is not one who constantly demands, constantly drains. Empathy surfaces. You hear yourself answering "Sure. Let's sit down over here."

I'm convinced that few events scare us more, or bond us quicker. In such instances we are immediately in touch with our own inadequacies and flaws. We are also in touch with our desire to help a fellow struggler. It is in this juxtaposition of shared weaknesses that God appears, asking us both to allow the healing to begin.

In such a scenario, it's easy to want a quick-fix answer. We can certainly shut down the conversation if we respond with:
You've got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
You're not praying hard enough.
Why don't you sleep on it and see if you feel better?
Someday you'll look back on this and laugh.
Why don't you just quit doing that?
Always look on the bright side.
Maybe God is trying to tell you something.

Or, as Franklin Adams muses: Every time we tell anybody to cheer up, things might be worse, we run away for fear we might be asked to specify how.

Our task, rather than running away, is actually:
To stay put.
To offer honest, invitational feedback.
To listen and learn.
To join in the journey as an encourager.
To express belief in the capabilities of the struggler.
To provide the spiritual resources of prayer and Scripture.
To ask for additional updates later.

Such caregiving is costly, and somewhat risky.
But caregiving is worth the cost and the risk.
For such responses bring God's loving presence into reality, allowing depths of human care to transcend fear and neediness.

And it won't be long until you'll be the one cornering somebody with urgency and pain in your voice, saying "Can we talk?" Virgil Fry