A Friend at Midnight
“Who can you call at midnight when everything has gone wrong?” This question shook me when I first heard it years ago. How many of my friendships were strong enough that I could impose on them in my hour of need? I wasn’t sure.
Scripture has much to say about friendship, describing a friend as someone who keeps confidences (Proverbs 11:13; 16:28), shares advice (27:9), and respects boundaries (25:17). But perhaps no one defined friendship more powerfully than Jesus. While to advertisers we are markets and to employers we are staff, to Him, the Master of all, we are “friends” (John 15:15). Jesus described His kind of friendship as being built on shared love of God and personal sacrifice (vv. 13, 15)—something He Himself modeled and called us to pass on (v. 12).
A couple of years after hearing that question, my wife and I suffered a significant loss. Darren, one of the few who knew what happened, traveled two hours to see me, listen to my anger and pain, and pray for me. Darren is a busy man who had plenty of other things to do with his day. But he followed Jesus’ example of sacrificial friendship. I really did have someone in my hour of need.
The question now is whether others have a “friend at midnight” in me. For there are few better ways to make more friends than to be one.
By Sheridan Voysey - Bread Ministries
John 15:9-17
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
