Living by Your Own Advice

Living By Your Own Advice

As I enter the afternoon of my life and live in the second half of my fifth decade, I more greatly appreciate the ministry of listening and offering to pray when responding to inquiries for counsel and guidance.  I respect life's mystery and irony which often require me to live by the advice and wisdom I give to other people. 

I suspect you have had the experience of taking a call from a friend or relative in distress.  Their anxiety level is so high that you can feel their sweat despite the geographical distance that separates you.  The torrents of their emotions reverberate like squalling winds and battering waves.  After calming them down and listening attentively to their predicament, you seem to have a perfect answer for their dilemma.  In fact, you believe your insight is so valuable that you cannot resist the egomaniacal temptation to wax eloquent as you share your celestially revealed wisdom.  Little would you know at the time that you would one day have to live by the sage advice that you just gave. 

This sobering reality yields humility as it relates to the wisdom you give freely to other people. Sometimes, we have to live by the words we speak.  "Physician heal thyself." In rural South Carolina where I spent my childhood years, we had a prevalent saying, "Don't dish it out unless you can take it." This folksy saying reminds us to be cautious about waxing eloquent when friends and neighbors experience difficult times.  Life's irony and mystery could easily catapult you in an equivalent set of circumstances.  Are you willing to accept your own medicine? 

In many cases, people in the midst of hard challenges need someone who genuinely listens and cares. There will be plenty of time for sharing enduring truths, practical wisdom and eternal biblical principles. The "ministry of silence and presence" offers divine and human empathy which hurting people need.  When we sit with people in their pain and suffering, we are most Christ-like and thus most wise.  The apostle Paul encourages the church at Rome, "Weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice." 

Essentially, it may be best to avoid being one of the friends of Job.  Rather than comforting Job and his wife in their misery, these friends actually compound their agony.  For a lengthy portion of the book, their incessant and sanctimonious exhortations are really sadistic.  Biblical scholars across the ideological spectrum concur that the thousands of words spoken by Job's three friends do not yield anything useful.  Had they been willing to sit quietly with him and patiently wait for divine revelation about his predicament, they would have been God's presence for Job.  Instead, they myopically seek to demonstrate their religious superiority.  Job immortally admonishes them.  "Silence!  Silence! That would be wisdom for you."