40acts: Ready to ActSample

Act 11: Friend Indeed

We’re thinking of friendship in its thick-and-thin sense today. Among our circle will be friends who are going through tough times and need someone near them. Sometimes, fear of saying the wrong thing makes us stay away, but so often all that’s needed is some company and a listening ear. 

If you’re scared of saying the wrong thing to someone in pain, don’t let that stop you from showing up. The book of James has a lot to share about how we can be present. ‘Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak’ (1:19). Piling on words can actually sometimes take away kindness, when simply being present as a faithful friend is all we need to do. An arm wrapped around someone’s shoulders while they cry silently. A silent friend keeping vigil through a tough night. We can all do that. 

James’ words would have been heard first by an audience who knew the Bible’s stories about tongues lit on fire by hell. They would have read about Job’s friends dropping in to deliver personal essays about why Job deserved his suffering. Chances are, we’ve all had friends like Job’s who’ve rushed in to offer easy answers or straightforward explanations for why struggles have come to us. 

It’s far from the Bible’s refreshingly simple take on what God’s design for life should look like, when we’re in pain: ‘Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known’ (1 John 3:2). The Bible simply leaves it at that. Something better is coming. We don’t know what, we don’t know when, and in the middle of that, we don’t have to know why suffering happens today. 

Our privilege and responsibility is to bring what Jesus brought when he encountered pain, cried outside his friend’s tomb, wept over a city of misled children of God, and took on humanity’s suffering on the cross. We can come to those in pain with a burning faith that gently, warmly sits alongside those in pain: in the absence of simple answers, we offer, simply, ourselves.