Being a pastor, it won’t surprise you to hear that people sometimes come to me with issues they are facing or difficult circumstances hoping for some counsel. As a man, it won’t surprise you that my intuitive response to any difficulty or circumstance is to immediately try to fix it. Here is the answer you need, or some stuff you can at least try, to resolve the problem. As a human being, it won’t surprise you that – quite often – there are problems beyond my ability to do anything about and beyond my experience or knowledge to even suggest anything remotely helpful.

The fact is, some problems and difficulties simply are what they are. There is nothing to be done per se. There is no help one can meaningfully offer. There is nothing that will fix the immediate issue(s). They are just difficult circumstances that people are in to which there is no specific answer. They are just hard and must be put up with and that is about all one can say.

What, do you suppose, is the right response then? Making paltry suggestions or offering helpful thoughts that are no help at all probably isn’t going to do much. Nor, as is often our wont, will firing out Christian cliches. It probably won’t be all that helpful expecting the person we’re speaking with to buck themselves up with some platitudinous thought that, whilst potentially true, does absolutely nothing to resolve the matter for them either. The difficulties remain and the Lord knows full well what they actually feel about them, even if they are doing their best to put a brave face on for the world. What does one say?

Sometimes, indeed often, the appropriate response may be to just say nothing. At least, not on the “solutions” front nor the identifying root causes one. This seemed to be the mess Job’s friends wandered into. They did their best work when they just sat with him and said nothing. The trouble all began when they opened their yaps and started yammering on about what Job had probably done to cause his own problems and what he therefore needed to do about them. They were largely wrong and their solutions were not helpful. They were at their best when they just sat with him and acknowledged that the situation sucked beyond belief.

In a bid to offer pastoral counsel, we sometimes forget the art of just acknowledging that some things are hard and its okay to admit it. It is absolutely fine to be sad about a difficult situation that has no apparent solution. It is acceptable to acknowledge what should be plain to everyone; some things are just miserable and there is no simple and straightforward fix for them, if there is even a fix for them at all.

Of course, the Lord will be using it some way. Of course, if we are believers, the Lord will be doing something or other through it. Of course he remains sovereign and still loves us. All absolutely true and wonderful things. But sometimes we won’t find out exactly what those things are or were in this life. We may trust he still loves us but it doesn’t change that the situation he has put us in – however much it is for our ultimate good – is still hard and unpleasant. God won’t waste it, but the issues remain hard. It may serve our good, but we might not see how until glory. Job had no idea why his suffering befell him and he doesn’t even find out at the end of the book! Whilst God promises to use all things for our good, he hasn’t promised to show us exactly how he is using these things for our good as we’re in them nor even after they’ve gone. He similarly hasn’t promised to give that word to anyone else so they can give us the proper counsel. He just assures us it is the case.

So what do we say when things are hard and we don’t know why? How do you counsel someone when there is no solution to the problem? If we don’t know why God is bringing this particular thing to the door of this particular person, it probably doesn’t pay to start having a guess. Instead, we can just acknowledge it is hard. We can lament the situation. We can affirm, if it is okay for David to write whole Psalms about how he is feeling terrible in different situations, it is perfectly alright to tell God how we are feeling, even if it isn’t what received Christian wisdom tells you must be felt! It’s not as if the Lord doesn’t know how you feel anyway, so you may as well be honest with him. Those of us who aren’t God (which, last time I checked, is all of us) should just affirm that the situation is hard, that it is legitimate to tell the Lord how you feel and that we might even say and feel the same things were we in the same position.

We don’t always need to jump in with our counsel at all. Sometimes counsel is not really what is needed. Sometimes what is needed is the freedom to just feel what you feel; an acknowledgement that this sucks and it is okay to feel that way. It’s not as if Jesus – who even knew the reason behind it – was jumping for joy at the thought of suffering on the cross. Even knowing the reason and the ultimate good it would serve, he was sad and anguished about it. He prayed to his Father asking for it to be taken away from him if possible. He even asked his friends to come and be with him as he prayed, not asking for their advice or counsel, but just to be with him because of the hardship coming upon him. If the Lord can do that, there seems no reason we can’t do it either.

So, if there is an intractable problem and our friend is in great anguish about it, the answer isn’t always solutions. Sometimes it is just acknowledging and affirming that this is really bad, it’s okay to feel it’s really bad and it’s okay to mourn the difficulties it brings. Our counsel may not be needed at all, least of all our solutions. Sometimes, we are best saying nowt and just acknowledging that it is, really, okay to feel sad and upset at difficult and hard things.