Tuesday 2nd June - Hearing the silence

DAILY BYTE

When my mom was dying, I remember very little of what people said to me, but I do remember vividly hours and hours of silence. We have all entered rooms or conversations where sufficient words to combat the pain or relieve the suffering escape us.

Often we try to fill the silences with common sayings – like “It is God’s will” and “Everything will be ok” – when we know it’s simply not that easy. We dare to say, “I know how you feel…” when we couldn’t possibly.

We have used these words to fill the silence, but why is it that we are so afraid of silence? Why is it that we try so hard to make our words function as the Holy Spirit instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to be in and around and filling the absence of our words?

Why is it that when people are suffering or in need, we insist that we must say the perfect thing and “do” something to fix it instead of simply being present in the midst of it? Why are we so busy filling the silence with our deeds of feeding others, clothing them, making our homes perfect to impress them, or nursing them to health that we forget to sit in silence and recognize the face of the God in them, which they can then see in us?

Let’s hear today what the Book of Job may have to say about this, keeping four things in mind this week: Job’s friends heard. They came. They saw, and they sat.

Job has lost his children, his property, his health, and he’s covered in boils. His is the face of unimaginable suffering, and when his friends hear about what has happened to him, they make a decision. They decide to come to meet him.

They come from different places and different journeys – just as each of us do – but they are still all countrymen of Job – they’ve all got a common humanity.

And so, having heard the need of a fellow human being, they make an appointment together to “console and comfort him.” In the Scriptures, this is a traditional expression of being in solidarity with someone in grief. It is a gesture of compassion and friendship, and if it’s missing, it makes suffering even more difficult to endure.

Being sick or sad does tend to seem less difficult when we’re not alone. Perhaps this is because when we involve ourselves in hearing the cries of people who are suffering, we involve ourselves deeper and deeper with a God who suffered for us and suffers with us.

Are your ears open to hearing the suffering of others? And if you can hear it, do you dare to go and meet it face to face? Do you actually believe that this can draw humanity closer to God?

GUIDING SCRIPTURE

Job 2:11 (ESV)

Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him.

PRAY AS YOU GO

God, you hear us when we suffer. You come to us when we need you. In fact, you are with us all the time because we need you all the time. Help us to hear the cries of your people and have the courage to respond. Amen.