Sitting Shiva!

"Sitting what" you might ask? Sitting shiva is a old Jewish custom where family and sometimes friends sit with a person who just lost a loved one. They just sit! They just love that person. If they need listening, they listen. If they need advice, they get it. How amazing!

This concept is amazing to me because in a culture like ours, America, where the average 
man says 20,000 words a day and a woman says 30,000, we sometimes forget to listen. 
James 1:19 says we should be quick to listen, slow to speak...

My dear friend Jon Herrman’s grandpa has had a severe stroke. As he talked to me and another friend Roberto, he told us he could not be a part of our church because he wanted to spend time with his grandpa before he passed. That was completely understandable but what I heard next out of Jon’s mouth caused some deep emotions to stir inside of me. He said to me, " Wes, my opa cannot really talk, move, or respond too much but I just want to be there with him." Man! What an amazing thought, Jon just wants to share the suffering with his opa. He wants to sit shiva with him. Not sure of his opa’s salvation, Jon is not preaching hell and fire to him but instead praying and sharing the burden. So awesome!!

In the book of Job, the very Godly man Job has just lost everything. I mean his possessions, sons and daughters, he was inflicted with sores from head to toe, and a very unsupportive wife. Job was far past his breaking point and then his 3 friends cruise up and see him emotionally torn. Do they start telling him how to fix his life, or it will get better? Nope, they wept aloud with him and sat 7 days and nights without speaking a word. They were sitting shiva. 
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I think we can all learn from this. It is not a Scripturally taken idea but a Jewish tradition. I know I need to learn from Jon and listen to people’s struggles, problems, addictions and just sit shiva.