When you are in trouble the first thing you get is often the last thing you need – advice!
We all do it. It is like an automatic response. Someone is in trouble, so we offer advice. The problem isn’t the advice, but rather the person that offers it. Often you don’t know all the facts, you never have been in that situation and your voice joins a dozen other advisors.
The result is confusion.
Just yesterday at Home Affairs I bumped into a fellow pastor. He smiled, shook my hand as if all was well.
When I asked for the purpose of his visit to Home Affairs, he shook my world. His son was stabbed to death for a cellphone. As a parent who lost a child through death almost 30 years ago I could instantly feel his pain.
Although we walked similar roads I could not give him any advice. My child was 16 months old and died of cancer, his son was a healthy young man.
We looked deep into each other’s eyes, shook hands and I left. Today his pain is mine. My role in his life is not to give advice but to be available. To say a prayer every time I think of him. Being available and praying is a source of strength to people in need.
Do you know someone who is hurting or broken?
“Shared grief is half the grief.”
