Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks.

Where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Tanya Wilmouth. Today on the podcast we're going to talk about how to be a friend, a good friend to someone that you love that is suffering. So when I went through a grieving process myself, one of the ways I

handled it was by becoming a student on how to handle grief. And I read a great book

by Nancy Guthrie called What Grieving People Wish You New

about what Helps and What Hurts. I highly recommend that book. But we're in the book of Job.

There is definitely a lot of suffering and grief going on. And today in the

chapters that we're looking at, chapters through through 28, we're going to meet Job's three friends and

look at how they handled Job's grief. So when we saw our

college friends for the third time in as many years at a funeral for one of our

parents recently, I had a funeral for one of our parents recently. I had this feeling as I was standing in

the greeting line, what am I going to say? I don't know what to say when I get to them and hug them both. Now I've been on the other

side of that line and I still had that feeling. I think I blubbered something

until my friend graciously pulled me into a hug and said,

we need to find a better time to get together.

It's hard to know what to say when your friends are grieving.

The first time you see them, it's like a hurdle you have to jump over to keep the relationship together.

And if you don't jump it, do you even have a relationship?

You don't want to be awkward or hurtful.

You don't want to make them cry, but honestly it's not so much about what we say at

visitations or funerals. It's what we do afterward that sticks. Being a friend to a grieving person is a marathon, not a sprint. The best

friends keep the conversation going long after the loss. Now the book of Job isn't really about grieving people.

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