When Suffering Feels Like a Dry Wadi: My Story, Job’s Story, and the Grace That Holds Us

There are Sundays when a sermon lands not just in the mind, but in the deepest, most hidden places of the heart. Today was one of those Sundays for me. As I sat in the warm auditorium—air‑conditioning soon to be fixed during the June holidays, the pastor joked—the message from Job 3–27 felt like someone had quietly entered the private corridors of my story and turned on the lights.

The sermon began with an image that stayed with me long after service ended: the dry wadis. Job calls his friends “dry wadis”—streams that look like they might hold water, but when a weary traveller steps toward them, desperate for relief, they turn out to be empty. As the notes say, “Dry wadi in Israel… seems to have a stream… but wadi was dry. No water.”

That image pierced me because I know what it is to walk through seasons of life where everything feels like a dry wadi. For me, suffering has never been a dramatic, sudden catastrophe like Job’s. Mine has been the slow, suffocating ache of uncontrollable mental‑health struggles—the kind that began in my teenhood and shaped the way I saw myself, God, and the world. It took five long years of psychotherapy before I finally felt the ground under my feet again.

And even now, as an adult, a mother, a leader, and a believer, I still carry the memory of those years like a scar that has healed but remains tender to the touch.

When Friends Become “Miserable Comforters”

The pastor reminded us that Job’s friends didn’t start out cruel. They came with good intentions. They sat with him. They wanted to help. But somewhere along the way, their preconceived theology—this rigid belief that suffering must always be the result of personal sin—blinded them to Job’s actual pain.

My notes captured it sharply: “Miserable comforters… No quenching of thirst… Friends have preconceived message… They ignore the lament of Job.”

I have lived this.

When my mental health spiralled in my younger years, people around me—well‑meaning, sincere, sometimes even godly—tried to explain my suffering in ways that only deepened the wound.

“Maybe you’re not praying enough.”

“Maybe you’re letting negative thoughts in.”

“Maybe you’re not trusting God.”

They didn’t know that I was already drowning in shame. They didn’t know that I was fighting every day just to stay afloat. They didn’t know that their explanations felt like accusations.

They didn’t know that I was Job.

The Theology That Hurts Instead of Heals

The pastor called it what it is: retribution theology—the belief that good things happen to good people, and suffering is always punishment for wrongdoing. As the notes say, “Sin therefore punished… Are they right?”

This theology is tidy. It is simple. It is comforting—until life breaks it.

Because what do you do when you have done everything “right,” and suffering still comes?

What do you do when you have prayed, served, obeyed, repented, and yet your mind betrays you?

What do you do when you are upright like Job, and still the darkness descends?

For years, I wrestled with this. I wondered if God was displeased with me. I wondered if I was defective. I wondered if my suffering meant I was unloved.

But the pastor reminded us of God’s verdict in Job 42:7: “You have misrepresented me… What Job says is right.”

God defends Job.

God rebukes the friends.

God says: Job’s lament is not sin. Job’s questions are not rebellion. Job’s suffering is not punishment.

And in that moment, something in me softened. Because I realised that God had been defending me too, long before I ever knew how to defend myself.

Suffering in a Fallen World

One of the most important truths from today’s sermon was this: suffering is part of the fallen world, not a sign of God’s absence.

My notes captured it plainly: “We failed to realise suffering is part of the fallen world… God is in the path of redemption.”

This is not a truth that removes pain, but it reframes it.

It means my teenage years of mental torment were not wasted years.

It means the nights I cried myself to sleep were not unseen.

It means the years of therapy were not signs of spiritual failure, but of God’s mercy working through human hands.

It means that suffering is not the opposite of God’s love—it is the place where His love often becomes most visible.

The God Who Is Silent but Never Absent

Job’s deepest cry was not about losing his wealth, his children, or even his health. It was about God’s silence. “God why are you silent… Why are you not speaking… How long?”

I have prayed those exact words.

There were seasons when I begged God to take away the anxiety, the intrusive thoughts, the emotional storms. Seasons when I felt abandoned. Seasons when I wondered if God had turned His face away.

But the pastor reminded us: God was never absent.

Even when Job could not hear Him, God was watching, sustaining, and ultimately vindicating him.

Even when I could not feel Him, God was carrying me through therapy, through community, through the slow rebuilding of my inner world.

Sometimes God’s silence is not abandonment—it is accompaniment.

How We Comfort Others Who Suffer

The sermon ended with a list that felt like a gentle rebuke to the Job‑friends in all of us:

• Listen and wait with them.

• Acknowledge we are sinners and no better.

• No simple answers.

• Hear their lament.

• Stand there and cry with them.

• Point them to Jesus, the only one who truly sympathises.

• Surround them with God‑fearing friends.

This is the kind of community I needed in my youth.

This is the kind of community I want to build now—for my students, my team, my family, and the people God brings into my life.

Because suffering is not something to fix. It is something to walk through—together.

The Hope That Holds Us

The pastor ended with Romans 5:3–5 and James 1:2–4—passages about endurance, character, hope, and the testing of faith. Not the kind of verses that dismiss suffering, but the kind that dignify it.

And as I reflect on my own journey, I see it now:

My suffering did not disqualify me from God’s love.It deepened my dependence on Him.It shaped my compassion.It formed my calling.It taught me to recognise dry wadis—and to become, by God’s grace, a stream that actually holds water.

Job didn’t know God’s full plan, but God knew Job.

And in the same way, even when I didn’t understand my suffering, God understood me.

He still does.