such flimsy words

Surfing the blogosphere, I found a response to Hurricane Katrina that can apply to any disaster or hardship.

An excerpt:

The elderly have lived through other tumultuous periods, but even an octogenarian would be hard pressed to name a more demanding time. And no one, retirement age and younger, has ever seen anything like what we’ve seen these last few years.

I’ve not trudged through the flood waters in New Orleans or walked the ashen streets of New York City. I’ve not carried the dead from trains in Madrid or London, or grieved among the desperate victims of the Asian tsunami. But none of us are insulated . . . not anymore. I know people who’ve been in such places, and I myself have stared into the eyes of families devastated by their own catastrophic loss—loved ones hurled to their deaths as a plane plummeted to the ground. I’ve held their hands and searched for words to speak into their darkness.

“So these three men ceased to answer Job.”
Job 32.1

Words fail times like these. Let us be clear about that. There are times when it is best to be silent.

“But Job said, ‘Am I to wait, because they do not speak?’”
Job 32.16

Yet there is a place for words. There is need for words. That ancient mourner, Job, speaks for us all testifying to that longing for words that rises up inside the human heart.

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