# Moving through suffering Day 5 > Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God. Opening Prayer: *Father, I know my wounded and broken places oh so well. At times they can consume me and keep me from being able to hear your voice. Help me to see my pain as an invitation to know you more intimately rather than a reason to doubt the goodness of your heart. Help me to know that through my pain you desire to accomplish something very good in me. In the name of Jesus, the author of our salvation, who was “made perfect through suffering.” Amen. (JLB)* #### Psalm for the Week: Psalm 121 #### My Help Comes from the Lord #### A Song of Ascents. *121 I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?2 My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.3 He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.4 Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.5 The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.7 The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.8 The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.* #### Scripture for the Day: Hebrews 4:14-16 #### Jesus the Great High Priest *14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.* #### Reading for Reflection: *I think there is an important lesson for us to learn here about how to help others in the grieving process: it is always futile and unproductive to try and explain tragedy in some comprehensive way. Saying piously that a loss is “the will of God” does not solve anything and may even create a sense of anger in the person who has been hurt. The calamities of life are all deeply mysterious and the more we try to “explain” them to each other and fix the blame and responsibility here or there, the farther we get from the truth. Job’s friends, because of their misguided intellectualizing, actually stimulated in him a seething resentment against God and the whole universe. Admittedly, he might have come to this position on his own, but there is no doubt he was driven forward by his friends. The basic issue in grief is never a rational explanation anyway. What matters is the nature of life itself and the One who gives it. Not until Job got to that level—to having it out with the Ultimate One—did healing begin to flow from him. This climactic stage finally came when Job, the one who was made, stood face to face with the One who did the making. (Tracks of a Fellow Struggler by John R, Claypool)* #### Reflection and Listening: silent and written #### Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself #### Song for the Week: It is Well *When peace like a river attendeth my way;* *when sorrows like sea billows roll* *Whatever my lot Thou hast taught me to say;* *It is well, it is well, with my soul* *Refrain:* *It is well….with my soul…it is well, it is well with my soul* *My sin O the bliss of this glorious thought;* *my sin not in part but the whole* *Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more;* *praise the Lord, praise the Lord O my soul* *And Lord haste the day when my faith shall be sight;* *the clouds be rolled back as a scroll* *The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend;* *even so it is well with my soul* ### Closing Prayer *Father, heal my wounds and make them a source of life for others; as you did with your Son Jesus. In whose name we pray. Amen. (JLB)*