Sitting in the ashes
Lynn McChlery
March 27, 2026
Add to Favourites
Listen to this daily worship
Job 2: 11-13 (NIV-UK)
11 When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathise with him and comfort him. 12 When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognise him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. 13 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.
A little girl came home with some solemn news. “My friend’s favourite dolly got broken.”
“Oh”, said her mother, “Did you help her to fix it?”
“No,” she replied, “I helped her to cry.”
Job experiences the terrible trauma of multiple losses. His friends don’t just send a message, they bother to show up in person. They find Job in a shocking state. Immediately, in solidarity and compassion, they assume for themselves the cultural symbols of intense grieving: weeping, tearing clothes, wearing ashes. They take on Job’s sorrow as their own, for seven whole days and nights, paying a high price in time and personal convenience. Job has friends sitting in the ashes beside him.
And they say nothing. Speaking to his heart not his ears, they minister by their presence. Not needing to find the right words or offer solutions frees them to enter Job’s pain simply as friends. Later, when they try to explain and advise and cajole Job to make sense of his suffering, they miss the point entirely.
What does sitting in the ashes with someone look like? A man who suffered severe depression for over a year commented, “Christians are too quick to fast forward to the happy ending.” Instead, when he couldn’t face going outside, a neighbour he hardly knew put his bins out every week and cut his grass. Another man had dementia, and his lifelong friend took his newspaper round to him every day – for three years. Wordless, in act and sign, these friends were embodied messages from God – as Jesus was, when he made himself nothing to come in person and identify with us in our ashes. “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…”
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, I wonder again at the depth of your compassion in giving yourself to us. I invite you to come and sit with me in whatever wasteland I find myself today. And give me courage to sit in solidarity with someone who is in pain, not trying to fix them, just to embody your love.
Login to comment.