An Arm on the Shoulder

I’ve been reading Gerhard E. Frost’s “The Color of Night”. It contains 86 short reflections on Job. I was introduced to Frost through a volume of devotions that Vickie and I read, “Spiritual Classics”, edited by Paul Ofstedal, Augsburg Press. Spiritual Classics has an interesting format; you spend fourteen days with writers as diverse as Augustine, P.T. Forsyth, Kierkegaard, Flannery O’Connor, C.S. Lewis, and George MacDonald. There were a couple of authors that we tried and couldn’t read for one reason or another, and there was one author that we didn’t try for theological reasons; but hey, as long as you know that the fish has bones (and this fish had just a few bones) have a go at it! All in all I’m glad we finally read the book in our devotions – I’d had the volume for years but never read it.

Here are some of Frost’s comments in The Color of Night on Job 16:1 – 5; first the passage and then Frost’s comments:

Then Job answered, “I have heard many such things; sorry comforters are you all.  Is there no limit to windy words? Or what plagues you that you answer? I too could speak like you, If I were in your place. I could compose words against you and shake my head at you. I could strengthen you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips could lessen your pain.” (NASB)

“Why does Job feel so cheated? Why this outburst of indignation? Probably because his friends have persisted in answering questions of the heart with arguments of the mind, forgetting that it is futile to argue with feelings, since “the heart has reasons which reason does not know.” Perhaps he feels their talk has been too cheap, requiring nothing of them  and giving nothing to him, for they have substituted debate for acts of love.

“No one ever thinks his way out of despair. He must be rescued by the ‘event’ of love. Explanations usually drive a despairing person into lostness or prove to be untrue by pretending to be complete.

“An arm on the shoulder, the gentle pressure of a warm and loving hand, a nod, a look, a smile, a kiss, sometimes a tear – these often provide all the language that one can endure. In these acts our words become flesh, and without these ‘events’ we cannot sense the caring love of God.” (Italics mine).

Who can we touch today?