How to Encourage Those Who Hurt

I often get the feeling that folks think telling me depressing stories of others worse off than myself will be encouraging.

“I know a widow woman who has 10 kids, all less than 3 months old. She doesn’t have a degree or any work experience, so she earns money to buy food by knitting Walmart sacks into puppies and selling them on the internet for a fraction of what they are worth. And one of her sons has 3 arms and 6 legs. Imagine the time she has each night teaching him to keep his feet off the dinner table!”

And everyone replies – “Oh My!! Bless her heart!!”

I struggle with finding this encouraging. In fact, I often find it depressing. When you are hurting you already have a heightened sense of all that is bad in the world. All this does is remind me that I have further to fall, more to lose.

To minister to one who is hurting is not to offer great advice or have the right answers. It is to offer a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on. It is to let them tell the same story over and over again.

It is to offer the heartfelt probe: “How are you?” which is so often left untouched. It is a question to be asked, however, only if you have time and are in a place to receive an answer. You don’t have to worry about saying something wrong. You see the pressure has been lifted. The hurting do not need advice. They need a friend. In fact, once you pose the question, you likely will not have to talk at all. I cannot promise, though, that you will not have to endure an uncomfortable flow of tears.

And please, my friend, do not give up on them. Sometimes, the masquerade of having it all together is so well played, they are not able to let the charade down; although they may desperately want to if just for a moment.

We are a hurting world and we need each other. God did not stop with the creation of only one individual. He created a nation of individuals by instructing us to multiply. Not because He needed us (although He definitely wanted us), but because we need each other. We can not lose sight of that in the busyness of our individual lives.