Of Being and Silence...Hmm..."...deep calls to deep..."

“Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was” (Job 2:13 TNIV).

I found this passage from Job intriguing as his friends came and just sat with him, to be with him, and in this way comfort him. The text is explicit, “…No one said a word to him…” and in certain seasons it is silence alone and the presence of another human being that is comforting. Another person with you, next to, the felt, tangible proximity of another life brings life and healing. This is difficult however, as we want to speak, to help, to add our voice because we think our words will help (and they may at times) but for Job it was his friends with him in silence that brought the comfort. It is when they spoke and offered all the words that Job was not comforted, he was troubled and in the end when God showed up it was Job’s prayer for his friends that brought resolution, restoration, and healing.

In the midst of the mess and the darkness more was going on than Job knew, nor could possibly know apart from God telling him. God did not abandon Job - rather he loved him in the pain, he cried, screamed and sat with Job through it all and Jesus manifested all of this during his life with us on earth. All the emotions, all the depth of suffering and death – even God wept for us, with us, and watered the earth with his blood and tears. God came to be with us, to experience life with us in all that this life can throw at us, both beautiful and horrible.

It is when we can simply be and are still with each other and sit and hang out with, share, hold a hand, breathe with, look at, see love in the eyes of a friend, and know without words in the loudness of the silence the love that is being spoken. This is how another, “…human being refreshes the weariness of my defeated days…” and this is as rare as a precious stone and as beautiful as all the sunrises and sunsets when it happens. We all ache for this, it is “…deep calling to deep…” for a union of souls with each other and at the same time and not without the presence of God. He is the deep in each of us, the enabler of oneness, the grace in life, the beauty in our hearts that is crying to be released and cherished, it the glory we each carry around and yet the world chides and beats back for fear of us being who we really are, free and alive.

So we hide and shrink back and it is at these times that we have the most pain and it as these times that we need the one who will sit with us, walk with us, cry with us, because it is too damn hard to do it alone – we desperately need each other. To be true and authentic, to dispel all the secrets and lies that we carry around with us in the dark places of our being and to let the light of our glory shine and not be afraid is the most difficult task often during the most desperate hours.

Brennan Manning wrote:
"Jesus perceived that the only way to help people experience life as a gracious gift, the only way to help them to prize themselves as grace and treasure, was to treat them as treasure and be gracious to them. I can be anointed, prayed over, sermonized to, dialogued with, and exposed to God’s unconditional love in books, tracts, and tapes, but this marvelous revelation will fall on ears that do not hear and eyes that do not see, unless some other human being refreshes the weariness of my defeated days. Barring prevenient grace, we humans simply will not accept our life and being as God’s gracious gift unless someone values us. We can only sense ourselves and our world valued and cherished by God when we feel valued and cherished by others."