There’s a moment most of us know. Someone you love is going through something, and there’s no fix and no clever words. A friend has had bad news. A parent is fading. A child won’t talk. You sit there feeling useless, and a voice says: you are no help, you may as well go home.
I’d like to gently disagree with that voice.
Come back with me to the Nile. A baby boy has been hidden for three months. His mother runs out of time, seals a basket, and lays him among the reeds. Then Scripture adds one small line that’s easy to miss: “The baby’s sister then stood at a distance, watching to see what would happen to him” (Exodus 2:4).
That girl is Miriam. She’s only a girl. She can’t stop the river. She can’t fight off the danger. She can’t change one thing. But she doesn’t leave. She stays close enough to see.
Two things worth holding onto.
First, staying is a choice. Walking away would have been easier. Watching is hard work, because you feel every minute of it. Miriam chose the harder thing, and she chose it quietly.
Second, presence puts you in the right place. When Pharaoh’s daughter opens the basket, Miriam is near enough to step forward and speak. Had she gone home, that moment would have passed without her. She couldn’t have planned it. She simply hadn’t left.
The psalmist knew this kind of waiting: “I am counting on the Lord... I long for the Lord more than sentries long for the dawn” (Psalm 130:5-6). Sentries on a wall through a long night. Nothing dramatic. Just staying awake, facing east, trusting morning comes. That’s not helplessness. That’s hope with its boots on.
I used to visit a saintly woman from the corps I led, after she moved into a care home. Often she’d be asleep. I’d just sit with her, think about her life and her ministry, and pray. She never knew I’d been. Neither did her family. It didn’t matter. It mattered that I stayed.
You may not be able to fix a thing this week. You can still be the one who stayed.
One small step today: think of someone in the middle of something you can’t mend. Don’t try to solve it. Move a little closer. Send the message that says “I’m here, no reply needed.” Sit beside them without filling the silence. Turn up at the door, at the school gate, at the ward. Ask nothing of them.
And hear this: you’re not doing it to earn God’s approval. You already have it. Miriam didn’t become important that day - she was already loved, already known, already his. The watching flowed out of who she was.
Years later that same girl leads God’s people in singing on the far side of the sea. Riverbank courage grew into a lifetime of ministry. But it started with a child who wouldn’t walk away.
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Who has stayed close to you when there was nothing they could do? Hit reply and tell me. I’ll pray for you both.