“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of all the losses Job suffered, surely it was the losses in his family that pained him most. The death of his ten children must have been dreadful. My great-grandmother lost four children in one week due to a smallpox epidemic in Québec in 1885, and my grandfather said she never fully recovered. On top of this, Job’s poor wife collapsed under the strain. And what of the rest of his household? Job tells us what he believes God has done to him: “He has removed my brothers far from me, and my acquaintances are completely estranged from me. My relatives have failed, and my close friends have forgotten me. Those who dwell in my house, and my maidservants, count me as a stranger; I am an alien in their sight” (Job 19:13-15). I knew a man, prominent in his community, who was falsely accused of molestation. He lost his job, his reputation, his testimony, his ministries, his house, his freedom, and who knows what else. But when I later asked him the hardest part, he sadly replied, “The believers abandoned me.” What do we read here? “Then all his brothers, all his sisters, and all those who had been his acquaintances before, came to him and ate food with him in his house; and they consoled him and comforted him for all the adversity that the Lord had brought upon him. Each one gave him a piece of silver and each a ring of gold” (42:11). Let’s say something while it will do some good, not after it’s over. Jesus takes this personally. “I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me” (Mt 25:36). Not speaking of Himself, He was calling us to visit “the least” of His brethren (v 40), as if visiting Him in His hour of need. Being more considerate and more compassionate on our visits is always better than silver coins and gold rings.