How to Help the Hurting People

Scripture

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

Galatians 6:2 KJV

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Big idea

Summary

Graham opens by addressing how Christians can genuinely help people who are hurting, insisting that simple availability -- being present, willing to listen, and keeping confidences -- matters more than having the right words. He shares examples of the isolation grieving people often feel, contrasting awkward avoidance with quiet acts of comfort, such as friends who simply sat beside a grieving widow or sang hymns at her side without saying much at all. He also points to the well-known account of Beethoven silently playing piano for a bereaved friend, and to Isaac Stern continuing his violin performance during a wartime missile alert, as proof that real comfort shows itself through action rather than announcement. Throughout, he insists that confidentiality and steady, dependable presence -- not clever phrasing -- are what actually earn a hurting person's trust and open the door to deeper conversation later on.

Graham then turns to the many subtle ways believers can unintentionally deepen someone's pain -- gossip, harsh criticism of children or spouses, chronic busyness, and a failure to encourage. He describes a man recovering from a broken neck whose fellow church members paid hurried, uneasy visits, contrasted with a humble non-Christian friend who returned every day with a simple word of reassurance. He also recounts a lighter, humorous episode involving a missionary couple to show that a sense of humor can itself be a form of resilience amid hardship. He commends practical, hands-on compassion -- illustrated through the parable of the Good Samaritan and the true story of humanitarian Bob Pierce tending a dying girl in Indonesia -- as a truer expression of bearing one another's burdens than distant charity given from afar, since it is far easier to write a check than to sit with someone in their suffering.

Finally, the chapter cautions against offering Scripture or religious sayings carelessly, since well-meant verses delivered at the wrong moment can wound rather than heal; comfort instead comes through patient listening, shared prayer, and gentle, unhurried presence. Graham draws on his own memory of receiving comfort from a trusted mentor during a painful season of unrequited young love to show how timely, well-chosen encouragement can carry someone through heartbreak. He notes that people who have themselves endured suffering are frequently best equipped to console others, though he warns against ever claiming to fully understand another's pain. The chapter closes with the reminder that God's comfort toward us is meant to be passed along, shaping us into comforters for others rather than simply making our own lives more comfortable.

Key points

• Genuine comfort is expressed mainly through quiet, consistent availability rather than through eloquent or well-rehearsed words.
• Believers can unintentionally add to someone's pain through criticism, gossip, unkindness, or simply being too busy to notice.
• Hands-on, personal involvement in another's burden is a truer form of compassion than distant or impersonal generosity.
• Offering Scripture or advice at the wrong moment can feel like a wound rather than a comfort, so timing and tone matter.
• People who have suffered themselves are often best suited to comfort others, though claiming to fully know their pain should be avoided.
• Christians are called to become comforters as a direct response to the comfort God has already shown them.

Illustrations & stories

• A widow describes feeling like an outcast after former acquaintances avoided her in public rather than acknowledging her loss.
• Beethoven, unable to find words for a grieving friend, instead played piano for half an hour as his way of expressing sorrow.
• Violinist Isaac Stern kept performing during a missile alert in Tel Aviv even as the audience put on gas masks, a picture of steady presence amid fear.
• A man recovering from a broken neck received brief, uncomfortable visits from church acquaintances, while a plain-spoken non-Christian friend visited daily with simple, steady reassurance.
• Humanitarian Bob Pierce, himself dying of leukemia, gave his own sleeping pills to a dying girl in Indonesia so she could finally rest.

Notable line

God does not comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters.

Billy Graham Hope for the Troubled Heart, ch. 13, closing line of the chapter

For reflection and discussion

1. Think of someone in pain right now -- are you making yourself truly available to them, or avoiding them because you're unsure what to say?
2. Recall a time when someone's quiet presence comforted you more than any words could. What made it meaningful?
3. Are there ways -- through criticism, gossip, or busyness -- that you might be unintentionally adding to someone's hurt?
4. How can you offer Scripture or prayer to a hurting friend without it feeling like a hollow or premature platitude?
5. Who in your life has been shaped by their own suffering in a way that now equips them to comfort others?