Yael sat on the worn stone steps of her small Jerusalem apartment, the orange-pink sunset bleeding across the sky unnoticed. Her fists were tucked under her chin, her whole body pressed into a silent question: Where are You?
It had been fifty-three days since the last rejection letter arrived. Fifty-three days of silence from heaven, from earth, from hope itself. She had prayed, wept, fasted, and sung every healing song she knew—and still, nothing. No offer for the career she’d trained years for. No flash of insight. No hand reaching through the clouds to lift her from the grey swell of waiting.
G-d’s promises had started to sound hollow to her. She hated how easily that thought came.
“You said, ‘I would see Your goodness,’” she whispered into the cooling night air, bitterness scraping her throat. “But it feels like You’ve turned away.”
A neighbor’s laughter floated up from the courtyard, cheerful and unburdened. It made Yael feel more alone somehow, a pocket of emptiness in a world still spinning.
The first sharp chill of night crept under her sweater, but she scarcely noticed. She was remembering her father’s voice, soft and steady, telling her as a little girl, "Sometimes G-d answers loudly. Sometimes G-d’s silence is the softest answer."
She had not truly understood then. She wasn’t sure she understood now.
Restless, she stood and wandered through the tangled alleyways, past the crumbling lemon trees and hand-planted gardens, her steps aimless, filling the silence with movement. After a while, she found herself at the old stone overlook above the valley. The last light was gathering in the folds of the hills. The city stretched beneath her, ancient and humming, alive even in its waiting.
Somewhere far below, a child’s voice rang out in off-key song, piercing the stillness. No words—just sound, clear and unashamed.
Yael pressed her hand to her chest, where tears had been frozen for days. Listening.
Maybe... maybe there was meaning even in the silence. Maybe the not-yet was not a punishment, but a place. A place held tenderly in G-d’s hands, even when it felt empty.
The warmth of that thought surprised her.
She remembered then a verse she hadn’t thought of in years, rising like an ember in the dark: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the L-rd.”
Tears blurred the glittering lights of the city. She let them fall.
Maybe purpose wasn't something she could wrestle from silence. Maybe it grew quietly, like an olive tree—roots deep under the earth before a single leaf touched the air.
Sitting down on a bench worn smooth by years of dreaming, Yael closed her eyes. She didn’t try to force a prayer out. She simply let herself be there, present before the One who had never truly left her.
It wasn’t an answer. It was a knowing: She was not betrayed. Only being held.
Somewhere behind her, unnoticed until now, a cluster of wildflowers had forced themselves through a cracked stone wall, tiny and brave, reaching for the stars.
Yael smiled through her tears.
She would wait. She would trust in the silence that held her, the silence that somehow, impossibly, still sang.
—
Supporting Torah and Tanakh Verses:
Yael sat on the worn stone steps of her small Jerusalem apartment, the orange-pink sunset bleeding across the sky unnoticed. Her fists were tucked under her chin, her whole body pressed into a silent question: Where are You?
It had been fifty-three days since the last rejection letter arrived. Fifty-three days of silence from heaven, from earth, from hope itself. She had prayed, wept, fasted, and sung every healing song she knew—and still, nothing. No offer for the career she’d trained years for. No flash of insight. No hand reaching through the clouds to lift her from the grey swell of waiting.
G-d’s promises had started to sound hollow to her. She hated how easily that thought came.
“You said, ‘I would see Your goodness,’” she whispered into the cooling night air, bitterness scraping her throat. “But it feels like You’ve turned away.”
A neighbor’s laughter floated up from the courtyard, cheerful and unburdened. It made Yael feel more alone somehow, a pocket of emptiness in a world still spinning.
The first sharp chill of night crept under her sweater, but she scarcely noticed. She was remembering her father’s voice, soft and steady, telling her as a little girl, "Sometimes G-d answers loudly. Sometimes G-d’s silence is the softest answer."
She had not truly understood then. She wasn’t sure she understood now.
Restless, she stood and wandered through the tangled alleyways, past the crumbling lemon trees and hand-planted gardens, her steps aimless, filling the silence with movement. After a while, she found herself at the old stone overlook above the valley. The last light was gathering in the folds of the hills. The city stretched beneath her, ancient and humming, alive even in its waiting.
Somewhere far below, a child’s voice rang out in off-key song, piercing the stillness. No words—just sound, clear and unashamed.
Yael pressed her hand to her chest, where tears had been frozen for days. Listening.
Maybe... maybe there was meaning even in the silence. Maybe the not-yet was not a punishment, but a place. A place held tenderly in G-d’s hands, even when it felt empty.
The warmth of that thought surprised her.
She remembered then a verse she hadn’t thought of in years, rising like an ember in the dark: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the L-rd.”
Tears blurred the glittering lights of the city. She let them fall.
Maybe purpose wasn't something she could wrestle from silence. Maybe it grew quietly, like an olive tree—roots deep under the earth before a single leaf touched the air.
Sitting down on a bench worn smooth by years of dreaming, Yael closed her eyes. She didn’t try to force a prayer out. She simply let herself be there, present before the One who had never truly left her.
It wasn’t an answer. It was a knowing: She was not betrayed. Only being held.
Somewhere behind her, unnoticed until now, a cluster of wildflowers had forced themselves through a cracked stone wall, tiny and brave, reaching for the stars.
Yael smiled through her tears.
She would wait. She would trust in the silence that held her, the silence that somehow, impossibly, still sang.
—
Supporting Torah and Tanakh Verses:
