I want to talk about friendship today. A version of this has been stewing in my brain for a long time but I’ve never felt that push from God to write it. Just the opposite actually. I started writing a version of it a few months ago without feeling led by God on it at the time. My computer crashed, and I lost it. If you think God isn’t in the small things, you’re wrong. He wasn’t ready for me to write it that day.
I woke up earlier than I meant to that Saturday last fall and walked onto my deck with my coffee and watched the sun come up. That sunrise got me thinking about friendship because our real, best friends are often like the sunrise. Sometimes you can’t see them but they show up when it’s time. They show up and end the darkness. They bring warmth and light. They’re never gone for long. They’re dependable. That’s what I started to write a few days later until God decided it wasn’t time.
I was starting to think maybe I should just leave this topic alone. I mean we all know it’s good to have friends. No, not just good, we need at least one. Many of us know that it’s a special kind of hurt when we get hurt by friends. Plus, it’s not hard to read about friendship and it’s benefits if that’s a thing you want to do. Maybe my voice isn’t needed here and is just white noise. But it’s been on my heart extra for the last couple weeks, so maybe God has something for me to say after all. Sunrise still reminds me of a soul-lifting, life-giving friendship, but I have had additional thoughts.
I was studying something all together different regarding Job recently and was reminded of his friends. Job’s friends get a light mention often but they get overlooked in a bigger story with just a whole lot of legs. So, I decided to go down that path just a little. You know the story of Job. He was a good dude and basically had everything. Then he lost it all. He’s really free falling when his three friends show up. They have plenty of flaws and even anger God, but they showed up.
They wept with him. They sat with him for a full week and didn’t say anything. They just sat and cried with him for a week! That’s some friendship right there. In the lowest parts of my life all I have wanted is to know that I’m not alone. I would wager that you feel the same. My friends cannot solve all of my problems. They can’t fix what’s meant to be broken. They can’t do the work that God has set out specifically for me to do. I shouldn’t expect them to. Job’s friends weren’t the ones that God was allowing to be tested.
I have a Beth Moore flip calendar that features wisdom from her Twitter feed. There was one I particularly enjoyed that said, “Sometimes people let us down because they can’t hold us up. ‘I can’t carry you’ does not equal ‘I don’t love you.’ It equals ‘I’m just not God.'” That resonates with me so much. We expect too much from our closest people sometimes. It’s not our friends’ jobs to do what only God can do.
I wonder how Job truly felt when he first saw his friends? He’d lost everything else. Sometimes the only thing that helps a soul is to sit and cry with a friend. After crying with him for a week they finally started talking. I’ll encourage you to go read it for yourself, because it’s a whopper of a story. If you really look at what they say to him it could be a conversation you’d have with your friends sitting around your kitchen table any old time. They cover some ground and really hash it out.
Job’s friends are far from perfect, but we can learn from them – how to be and how not to be. They made time. We can’t and shouldn’t be best friends with everyone. God didn’t make us to be liked by everyone, and we can’t maintain many friendships at that level. That’s far too heavy of a load. We have to be willing to be inconvenienced when our friends need us. We can’t do that for a host of people. Job’s friends had their own lives in their own places but they put them on hold and went to him when they were needed.
We’re given no indication that they waited. When they heard, they went. There’s never a good time for bad things to happen or friends to be in need. For our closest friends, to the extent that it’s humanly possible, we’ve got to be willing to drop something and go running when they need us.
Job’s friends didn’t say all the right things, but they were there. God later calls them out for not speaking what is right about Him. Ultimately, though they did what God commanded them to do, and Job’s losses were restored when he prayed for his friends. We need to be praying for our friends. And if your friends don’t actively pray for you, they might not need to be in your closest circle.
God made us to need each other. We need friends, and we need to be a good friend. We need to be picky, though, about who we choose to be our closest people. They have more influence on us than we realize. What they say, how they act and what they believe all impact us directly. The Bible tells us that bad company corrupts good character. It’s crucial to put the work in to finding good friends. We have to be vulnerable, and that’s scary. We have to take our turn showing up when they need us.
The flip side to friendship is that we to need to be willing to extend some grace to our friends. None of us are perfect. We’re going to have moments when we say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing or don’t show up when perhaps we should have. If extending grace is required constantly, something is wrong. But if your friend makes a rare mistake and is sorry, then grace is the solution.
I think about how Jesus was close enough to look his good friend Peter in the eye when he had denied him the third time and that rooster crowed. Can you imagine the feelings on both sides of that look? Peter wept. Jesus offered grace as Jesus does. Peter rallied. Let’s offer our friends enough grace to not expect them to be perfect.
Much like marriage, a good, deep friendship isn’t always easy but it’s always worth it. We need a couple close friends and they need us. Personally, I think we need two or three at the deepest level because sometimes being my friend requires heavy lifting. However many you require, it’s worth the effort of being a good one and making the investment in return. Love your real friends and make sure they know it. A sweet friendship does refresh the soul.
