The truest friends stand by you. Even when you’re at your worst. Especially when you’re at your worst. They know your sometimes not-so-pleasant demeanor isn’t a reflection of your heart, but the battle being waged inside it. And rather than abandoning you to your enemy to seek more agreeable company, they’ll move mountains to help you fight it. Walk with you into the fray. Hold your hand in the dark. Rejoice with you in the light. I’m afraid this isn’t the friend very many people have ever found in me. Perhaps it’s a friend many people have never found in anyone. But it is the friend we will always have in Jesus.
Deep waters can swing your pendulum one of two ways. Either destroy your faith or build it. Make you bitter or better. Turn your back on God or your face toward him. Contemplating the last fifteen years of my life, the overall trend of my swinging has been toward the positive. Toward faith. Toward growth, toward God.
Zooming in, though, the road has been rather like this stretch of mountain highway. Back and forth and up and down. Hairpin turn after hairpin turn. One step forward, two steps back. Two steps forward, one step sideways.
Pendulums don’t always swing in straight lines. Mine has been the rope in a tug-o-war between hope and despair, anger and trust. Shouting at God, then pleading with him.
My heart is his. But it feels like he’s broken it.
Jesus knows something about that. He didn’t cry out on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” because he felt secure. He’d been left, it seemed, to suffer alone. By a Father he loved who, at that moment, maybe didn’t seem to love him.
He plunged into an abyss deeper than my sorest trials could ever make remotely comprehensible.
That’s what makes him such a powerful friend. “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”
Nothing I face is beyond his comprehension.
The Comfort of a Friend Who Gets It
I’ve been knocking at a certain door for years. Waiting for it to open, I’ve looked at other doors and wondered if knocking at one of them would gain me the entrance I’ve been denied at this one.
But this one has my heart. It feels like mine. If there’s nothing for me behind it, I don’t know where there is something for me. So, I’ve told Heavenly Father, “I’m not leaving this door. I’m too weak to knock anymore, but you know I’m here. If you ever decide to open it, I’ll be the skeleton you trip over.”
That was the image in my head. Me sitting on the back stoop wasting away waiting for an answer.
Not exactly a generator of positive energy.
But one day–I don’t know exactly when or how–the scene changed. I was still an emaciated shell hunched outside the door, but Jesus came up the steps, sat beside me, and put his arm around me.
There he remains in my mind and, I think, in reality. It’s still not time to go inside. He can’t open the door before it’s time. But he can sit with me while I wait.
He doesn’t say anything. No trite reassurances, no pep talks. No one-ups, although he’s certainly entitled to them. “You think this is bad? Try bleeding from every pore.”
Though my pain is only a drop in his bucket, it’s a tsunami in mine, and he doesn’t belittle it. He knows how it feels.
So we sit there in silence. Him knowing and me knowing he knows. And it’s enough.
That’s the friend I have in Jesus.
Sometimes that’s all the friend we need in each other. Not that there aren’t times for reassurance and encouragement and tactful reminders that it could always be worse. But there are also times when what a hurting person needs more than anything is to sit in the quiet, compassionate presence of someone who’s been there.
That image of sitting in silence with Jesus has been some of my best medicine.
Taking It to the Lord in Prayer
This hymn admonishes us to take every trouble to God in prayer. That we forfeit peace and bear needless pain when we don’t.
So true. Jesus said, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.“
Prayer lays your burden at his feet.
But I think prayer, like grief, goes through stages. There’s the stage where you lay it all down, and there’s the stage where you’ve laid it down so many times it brings despair, not solace, to do it again. Nothing changed the first thousand times. Why should it be different now?
My prayers hit this stage, and some are still there. I can’t pray them anymore. It hurts too much.
Maybe my problem is that I have to keep laying it down. You can only lay down again what you picked back up. Do I leave my cares at the cross? Or just take them for a visit? Resigned to always take them with me when I leave?
If I want to know what steals my peace in prayer, that’s a likely culprit.
But not the only one.
Even if I leave my trouble with God, it doesn’t always mean I’m going back to a world where it no longer exists. I can hand him my marital status like a trusting child. But when I’m done praying, I’ll still be single. Maybe God will also be in motion to change that, but in the meantime–even if you try to leave the burden, you don’t get far before it jumps on you.
Having to take it back to the Lord in prayer doesn’t always mean you couldn’t leave it alone. Often it means it wouldn’t leave you alone.
Hence the despair.
Taking It to the Lord in Silence
So, did I mention that while Jesus and I are sitting on the stoop, I don’t say anything, either?
If he is such a friend he can speak peace without saying a word, I think it’s possible to give him my cares without having to explain them. At least, not again. He’s been watching me outside that door. Heard my knocking and pounding, saw me peering through the keyhole, listened to every call and cry.
He doesn’t need me to explain why I’m now sitting dejected on the step.
So I don’t. When he wordlessly puts his arm around me, I wordlessly lay my head on his shoulder.
The burden is still with the Lord in this picture. I didn’t take it to him. He came and got it. But I let him.
You don’t always have to speak when you pray. Sometimes you just have to let Jesus hold you. That surrender tells him everything he needs to know.
You Have a Friend in Jesus
I found a friend in Jesus in an abyss. Unfortunately, that’s sometimes the only place we’ll ever truly go looking for him. But he walked through one himself so he could come into ours, not just to find us but to be found.
Whatever darkness you’re in, Jesus is in it with you. And one day, when someone else is in the darkness, they may not only find a friend in Jesus but in you. Someone who was there. And came out.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13
What kind of friend have you found in Jesus? Share in the comments and, as always, if this post has encouraged you, please help it encourage others by passing it on.
“What a Friend We Have in Jesus” Lyrics
Written by Joseph M. Scriven Music by Charles C. Converse What a friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear! What a privilege to carry Everything to God in prayer! O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, All because we do not carry Everything to God in prayer! Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged; Take it to the Lord in prayer! Can we find a friend so faithful Who will all our sorrows share? Jesus knows our every weakness; Take it to the Lord in prayer! Are we weak and heavy laden, Cumbered with a load of care? Precious Savior, still our refuge-- Take it to the Lord in prayer! Do your friends despise, forsake you? Take it to the Lord in prayer! In his arms he'll take and shield you; You will find a solace there.
Scripture References
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Thank you for this Heather! Something that I’ve been thinking about is somewhere along the lines of this: you mentioned the time when Jesus was on the cross and He felt forsaken by His Father… seems like that would be the time you would need a friend the most and yet no one is there. Does that mean that He didn’t have a friend to help and support Him? Of course not. Sometimes the moment warrants a time of solitude and the friend who loves you and understands you can only watch from a distance. Their hearts are drawn out towards you, but they are constrained from being present with you simply because it is a moment where you are to walk alone. The Savior had to go through His horrific sufferings and he did have angels to attend to Him and support Him, but there came a point where even God Himself withdrew His strength/presence/love/support? so that Jesus could complete His mission entirely on His own. This moment of supposed “abandonment” may be very short and brief, or it may take a length of time. Nevertheless, it was necessary for Jesus to have that moment of feeling forsaken so that He could do what was only His to do. Likewise, we will find ourselves in the same situation at times where we feel forsaken and alone, even by God. But you know what I’ve discovered? That even though Father may have “forsaken” me, He was still there next to me all along. He never really left me like I thought He did. Although Jesus felt forsaken by God just before He died, who was right there to take His spirit home the moment Jesus surrendered and gave up the ghost?
A friend is still a friend indeed, even if you can’t see them there or feel that they’re supporting you in the way you need it. They’re still there, loving and praying for you.
Absolutely! It’s never a real “abandonment”. He’s ALWAYS there. He just also has to allow what he has to allow for us to do and be what we need to do and be. Sometimes that feels like abandonment, but when the work is finished, it will all be worth it! Thank you for sharing your perspective, Spring.