“So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, with no one speaking a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great.” — Job 2:13 (HCSB)
Before you look at what Job’s friends got wrong (and they got a lot wrong) this passage catches them at their best. They heard what happened to their friend. When they arrived and saw him, they barely recognized him. The man they knew had been so completely undone by suffering that he looked like a different person. Their response was to tear their clothes and put dust on their heads, dramatic gestures by our standards, but in that culture they were the most powerful way a person could say “this is beyond anything I know how to handle.” Then they sat down on the ground next to him. For seven days, nobody said a word.
That’s actually extraordinary. Seven days of silence. No advice of theological explanation. No trying to fix it, but just showing up and staying. It’s worth noting that this is exactly the picture that the Jewish practice of sitting shiva is modeled after, community gathered around someone in grief, not rushing them through it, not filling the silence with noise. Just being there. There’s a reason that tradition has lasted thousands of years. It works because it’s human, and it’s honest.
We Christians don’t always do this as well. It is common for people to quote one verse or another about how God has a purpose, even in a great tragedy. You likely can even think of one of those verses in your head. The dead in Christ and no longer facing death, pain, and sin. There is great joy for them.
But the person dealing with that loss, probably just needs someone to sit down next to them. There is a time for celebrating what awaits believers on the other side of death. There is also a time for mourning, and the Bible is pretty clear that both are legitimate. The Bible is also clear about the tenderness of God when we need that, too.
I have a hard time doing that sometimes, myself. I am naturally a “get up, dust yourself off, and get back to work” kind of person. That has served me well in a lot of situations. But it also means I sometimes move past pain (my own and other people’s) faster than I probably should. I don’t always give myself or others permission to just sit in the hard thing for a while. Job’s friends, whatever their many failures later in this story, got this part right. Sometimes, the words from our mouths are less important that our presence. Job’s friends got that.
My own needs, my own hurt, my own losses are not insignificant to God either. I am a small figure in the grand scale of human history. Thousands of years of people have lived and died before me and thousands will after. But that doesn’t mean what I carry doesn’t matter to him. It does. and the Church, at its best, reflects that same care. Sometimes the most important thing I can do for someone is to not say anything at all, and just sit with them in it.