Monday, March 13, 2006

Quote of the Day

That is, we rarely hear very well when someone talks to us without any real interest, love, or compassion. But when godly love is wrapped around words, people listen. Isn't it true that two people can say the exact same thing, yet the words of one may be empty, and the other beautiful? The difference, of course it that one person is a short-term, unaffected consultant, while the other loves the depressed person like a member of the family.
From Loving Those Who Are Depressed, by Ed Welch, in The Journal of Biblical Counseling, Vol. 18, Number 2, Winter 2000.

1 comment:

Valerie (Kyriosity) said...

This is one good reason to make counseling a ministry of the church, rather than outsourcing it. Assuming that the given congregation has been pursuing a sense of family-ness all along, there is already a solid foundation of trust, and words that might otherwise sound like platitudes can instead be received as simple meat-and-potatoes truth. There's something creepy about the counseling profession outside of the church. It kind of reminds me of another profession that takes money and offers a poor substitute for committed love.