Great Healing Can Happen In Response To Silence

​A friend once told me, “I think we’ve lost the art of friendship - and that’s truly devastating.”

The saddest part was that she sounded devastated. She said she, and she believes many of us, are craving relationships that fill our souls as much as we try to fill the souls of others.

That sat heavy with me.

This morning, I found myself reading in the book of Job. Maybe you’re familiar with the story: Job is faithful, strong, blessed… and then suddenly stripped of everything - his wealth, his health, even his ten children. It is heartbreak layered on heartbreak. A season that would make many dark seasons seem like a party.

But here’s the part that has me reflecting this morning:

Job 2:11-13:

Three of Job’s friends heard of all the trouble that had fallen on him. Each traveled from his own country - Eliphaz from Teman, Bildad from Shuhah, Zophar from Naamath - and went together to Job to keep him company and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they hardly recognized him. They cried, ripped their robes, and threw dirt on their heads. Then they sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights. Not a word was spoken, because they saw how great his suffering was.

Before they ever said a word, these three men did something almost unimaginable:

They heard their friend was hurting… and they dropped everything. Jobs. Families. Responsibilities. They coordinated a trip across borders just to be with him.

And when they arrived?

They sat in the dirt with him for seven straight days.

Not one pep talk. Not one solution. Not one “have-you-tried-this?”

Just presence.

Just sorrow.

Just listening - the kind that happens without a single word.

The most interesting part of this story, and maybe why God decided to weave this tale of friendship into a message on suffering, is that as the story goes on, these 3 friends became far less helpful once they actually started talking to Job. When they started offering their opinions about why he's suffering. When they started giving him advice about how to get his life back on track.

The moment they started talking is the exact moment they stopped helping. Once they shifted from presence to opinion, the friendship began to unravel. They were so determined to be useful, to be the fixers, that they forgot the most healing thing they had already done:

They showed up. And they stayed.

We underestimate that. We underestimate the soul-feeding power of someone who simply sees how rotten we feel and chooses to sit in the dirt with us anyway.

I’ve been blessed lately with friends like that. Friends who didn’t try to rescue me from anything - they just refused to leave me alone in it. It made me feel less rotten. It made me feel grateful.

And it made me more mindful of the people in my life who might be waiting for someone to sit with them.

I think there’s a reason God included this piece of Job’s story, a reason the friendship was strongest when the friends were silent, and a reason it started to crumble when they felt a need to do more than show up.

Because I think that’s what we all want. We want relationships and intimacy with people who will show up, sit down, and stay.

And maybe that’s all God ever wanted from us too.

Maybe God craves what we crave - not constant talking, but quiet presence. Not answers, but availability. Someone willing to stop in the middle of their busy life, sit down in the dirt, and simply be there.

Sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is the thing Job’s friends accidentally got right:

Be still.

Be present.

And listen.

(re-written from an article I wrote in 2020)