“I don’t remember the last time I said, ‘I love you’ to my parents,” writes Isabel Ong. “In fact, I don’t think they’ve said that to me much either in the 30-something years of my existence.”
This fact isn’t as drastic as it may sound, Ong explains. Her family is Chinese Singaporean, so affection is more often communicated in other ways, like sharing food or asking how work is going. And then there’s the way they make judgmental comments.
Ong resonated with the family dynamics in the film Everything Everywhere All at Once, which she recently reviewed for CT. The family in the film expresses affection through verbal gut punches, too. But they also, Ong notices, let their love linger in what is left unsaid.
Might God do the same?
“I used to think that silence on the part of God displayed his absence,” she writes. “I’m not so convinced anymore. Surely God’s hesed, the Hebrew word we understand as loyal love, steadfast love, or loving-kindness, goes beyond words and cannot be contained or defined only by verbal demonstrations?”
For many of us, hearing the words “I love you” feels like a necessity within our relationships. And there’s nothing wrong with that need. But in seasons when love feels lost to silence, may we be encouraged that God’s affection for us echoes in the quiet.
