What Type of Friend Are You?
Don’t be like Job’s friends.
“I mean, y’all are supposed to show up and grieve with me, but no, you’ve decided this is the perfect time for you to tell me how you really be feeling about me. OK.”
That’s what I imagine Job telling his friends, who said they were there to grieve with him, but their words tell a very different story.
They did not give him space to be sad and angry and feel his feelings. They thought it was disrespectful to God.
As if God is some snowflake who gets easily offended and needs His creations to come to His defence.
That has never been on your job description, believer.
Yours is to love the Lord with all you are and to love your neighbour as yourself.
Go do that first before you enlist to be on a defence army the Lord did not ask for. Go do what He asked first.
Yes, Job’s friends rile me up.
They were too quick to assume that all the calamities he was facing were because he had done something so terrible that God just had to punish him!
And I get hindsight is 2020 and that I have the context that what Job was going through was because God bragged about him. But even without the context, if I go see my close friend whose just lost everything, and their health is now also declining, the first thing would not be “So, I think you’ve been pretending to be this righteous person but you’re really wicked because bad things only happen to bad people.”
You know?
It wouldn’t be the time for me to say exactly what I think about them even if I felt some type of way. I mean, common courtesy anyone?
However, as trifling as these 3 dudes were, the reality is that some of us are just as trifling today.
How? 🤔
Well, any time you are quick to judge your friend, or you make their situation about you — like when they’re being vulnerable and then you shift the conversation to yourself.
I know we are inherently selfish beings, and we silently think the world does or at least it should, revolve around us.
However, the only way to have meaningful friendships is to not make it just about you, to be kind, to have empathy, to be a safe space.
And please don’t do that, “I’m just holding you accountable” nonsense that people with I’ll motives us to hide them.
Also, there’s a time for everything. And when someone is in the thick of things, drowning, barely hanging on, that’s not the time for accountability holding.
So, maybe take some time and think of the kind of friend you are.
If you see yourself in Job’s 3 so-called friends, check yourself and rectify.
Always with love 💖 and take it with a pinch of salt because, after all, these are just my musings.
Xo,
Adoyo’s Musings.