Comfort in the Ashes: Explorations in the Book of Job to Support Trauma Survivors
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Navigating Trauma in the Church
It’s time for church leaders and believers to stop offering prettily packaged responses from a safe distance. It’s time for us to sit in the ashes with the hurting, our Sunday clothes covered in dirt and grime, our faces lined with tears. Trauma brings people to the ash heap, so that is where the church needs to go.
The church should serve as a refuge for people in pain. And yet, we often end up unintentionally causing more hurt to trauma survivors. Theological platitudes and positive thinking aren’t simply dismissive to those who suffer, but they inevitably retraumatize the wounded. Does the Bible have anything practical to offer for church leaders as they engage the pain in their congregations?
Biblical scholar Michelle Keener shows us that the book of Job provides embodied and practical answers for the church today. In this incredible tool for ministry leaders and trauma survivors alike, Keener offers:
Comfort in the Ashes helps leaders navigate their own trauma and gives practical guidance for supporting others whose worlds are falling apart. God meets us in our ashes and our pain. It’s time for the church to do the same.
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- Shows us that the book of Job provides embodied and practical answers for the church today.
- Offers reflection questions for ministry practitioners.
- Helps leaders navigate their own trauma.
- Foreword by Scot McKnight
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. What Is Trauma?
- 2. Job’s Experience of Trauma
- 3. The Ministry of Presence
- 4. Talking About Trauma
- 5. When Words Fail
- 6. Where Is the Justice?
- 7. Out of the Whirlwind
- 8. Behemoth, Leviathan, and Job
- 9. Putting a Shattered World Back Together
- 10. A Church of Dust and Ashes
- 11. Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Scripture Index
Biblical scholar Michelle Keener has taken up the book of Job and made it sing. And the song it sings, in the hands of this trauma survivor, is surprising and tender. It is a song of grief and loss expressed, of friendship that succeeds and fails, of a shattered world painfully reconstructed. Above all, this book sings of a Scripture that is sensitive to survivors of trauma, and a God who meets them in the ashes.
—Helen Paynter, executive director of the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence
Michelle Keener has provided an excellent resource for those who want to become better stewards of other people’s pain. Her research on trauma and the book of Job are insightful and invaluable. This book is instructive for individuals as well as church communities on how to deal with trauma in ways that promote healing.
—May Young, associate professor of biblical studies at Taylor University
Michelle Keener has given us all a gift to be treasured—whether we have experienced trauma or want to walk well with those who have. Comfort in the Ashes assists readers in understanding trauma and the healing process while offering a perceptive and illuminating reading of the book of Job. Reading Job through the lens of trauma recovery makes space for a healing encounter with God on the pages of Scripture. I’m personally grateful for the way this book taught and ministered to me, and I’m eager to share it with others!
—Carmen Joy Imes, associate professor of Old Testament at the Talbot School of Theology and author of Bearing God’s Name and Being God’s Image