Fear breaking Friendship

Have you ever been so afraid of something you have seen in someone else you are scared away?

There are many things I see in this world from which I turn my gaze away. Homeless men and women on the side of the road holding up their signs for money. I don't want to make eye contact because they might just expect something from me and I either have nothing to give or I don't trust what they will do with what I give them so I don't want to give it, or I'm feeling the stress of trying to make ends meet myself and don't have a generous enough heart to give any of my own away.

There are gruesome things in the world I can't bear to look at. Stories on the news I don't want to see and I feel the media is just showing it too me so they can get ratings. These are things I don't mind looking away from.

There are things I wish I didn't run from though. When i see someone in need. Not someone on the side of the street who I don't know and I'm not sure what they will do with what I give them. But people I know, people at church, people in my circle of friends, people even in my own family. I know they are in need. I can see it on their faces and I walk the other way. Mostly because I don't feel like I have enough to give. My emotions are worn that day, I am low on sleep, I just don't have the time right now. I have so much to do if I stop to talk it will just slow me down. I won't know what to say. Or perhaps sometimes the reason we don't stop is because we fear what is going on might just be contagious and we will feel the same sorrow written in the lines on their faces.

Job replies to his friend in chap 6. He wishes once again that God would cut him off and let him die. And if God won't give that too him you would think he would at least have friends who would stand by him. But no these friends have seen his suffering and it has scared them away. Now we know they are still sitting right there. But they are trying to find something Job has done which they have not, so they can distance themselves in some way from this calamity and find themselves safe on the other side of the abyss.

What good can we actually be to our friends if we distance ourselves from them, in actual distance, lack of communication, business, or what ever else we might use as an excuse to keep us away and protected from the same fate or even in having to share in the suffering. We don't want to feel suffering, we don't like suffering, so we avoid it at every cost. But Paul tells us to morn with those who morn and weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice and laugh with those who laugh. The only way this will be possible is if we allow ourselves to get close to them.

May we set aside our fear tonight and enter into the lives of those around us even if we might find our eyes welling up with tears as well. Not to be scared fair weather friends but to be the ones who will enter the storm in the midst of the rain not waiting for it to blow over and not carrying an umbrella either. May we be willing to get drenched.