Job Had Great Friends. Job 2:12-13.

Are you a true friend? Do you have true friends? Proverbs 17:17 says, “A brother was made for adversity.” But sometimes a true friend is the one you can really rely on.

Job had true friends. Yes, that’s right—Job. Everyone criticizes and mocks his friends. We judge them harshly because they saw all that Job endured and they told him the only answer they had: repent and beg God to forgive you. We charge them with judging Job and accusing him falsely. But we do the same thing. When we see tragedy, we too have thoughts like, I wonder what he did?, or it looks like God’s trying to get someone’s attention. But Job was innocent and God came and confronted Job’s friends with their error. The moral of the story is, bad things happen to good people–and sometimes inconceivably horrible things happen to the best people, even one God describes as “a perfect man.”

But I want to focus on something else about Job’s friends. The story begins as they arrive together:

“And when they lifted up their eyes and did not recognize him… they WEPT and TORE their clothes, and put DUST on their heads, and they SAT with him on the ground SEVEN DAYS and nights, and SPOKE NOT a word, for they saw that his grief was very great.” Job 2:12-13.

Can you imagine friends who would sit with you for seven days? Men who would weep with you? And tear their clothes? Put ashes in their hair? And—most incredible—say NOTHING for seven days? Can you imagine EVER going seven days without talking? That is truly AMAZING. These are incredible, godly, serious, true friends. Sure, their advice may have been mistaken. But they earned the right to speak by sitting with Job in silence for SEVEN DAYS. I can’t get over how incredible that is.

Tragedy has a way of showing you who your friends are. I experienced a three-car accident in 1997 that was an example. The people who visited me in the hospital arrived almost perfectly in order of importance. Family first. Then closest friends. Then others… 

Dear God, make us true friends. Show us when to show up for people, and when to speak and when to be silent. Use us to spread mercy and love.

ΑΩ