Job LI

 Job had true friends because he was a true friend in kind. When the three men heard of his troubles, they didn’t shrug their shoulders and say it was well deserved or that it’s what you get for being a double-dealing weasel; they made a plan to visit Job and mourn with him in his time of travail.

Sometimes, people will say behind your back what they wouldn’t dare say to your face. Their true heart, feelings, and what they think of you come out when a third party delivers news to them regarding something that’s happened to you because you’re not there, and they don’t have to put on airs.

Sometimes, the response by someone who was supposed to be a friend of another to their predicament is so vitriolic and hate-filled as to shock you into silence. Because I used to travel back and forth to Romania a lot, back before the time of Zoom calls and instant messages, I’d be used as what I’d come to affectionately call a news mule. Everyone in church knew I was planning a trip, so they’d come by the apartment with either a letter, a small package, or a pair of shoes and ask if I would be so kind as to deliver these things to family and friends. It got to the point that I’d barely have room for a pair of pants and a shirt in my allotted two seventy-pound suitcases because if you say yes to one person, you have to say yes to everyone else; otherwise, they’ll infer some nefarious reason as to why you said no, or think you harbor ill will toward them.

People will take advantage of your kind nature if they can, and if you give an inch, they’ll take a mile. If you say you’re willing to deliver a letter to their grandmother, they’ll show up with a forty-pound audio mixing board and even give you instructions to pack it well and make sure it doesn’t get damaged en route. Have you seen how they throw suitcases onto those carts at the airport? I’m not guaranteeing that it will make it in one piece, never mind that it will function when it gets there.

Eventually, it got to the point that I was running an amateur DHL service without getting paid every time I’d go back to the homeland, and I realized the easiest way out of my predicament was to not tell anyone I was planning a trip, or when I was going back, and just like that, I had enough room in my suitcases for my own changes of clothing.

During one such trip, the mother of a man I knew in church asked me to pass on some news about one of his neighborhood friends who’d gotten into an accident and had to have their leg amputated because it was too badly mangled and couldn’t be saved. I’d gotten into the habit of always carrying a notebook with me because it was just too much to keep track of in my brain, so I wrote it down and who it was meant for. When I got back home after a Sunday service, I went up to him and gave him the news that his mother had asked me to pass on.

I don’t know what had transpired between the two men, but it was evident that his mother was not in the loop because after telling him of his friend’s troubles, he just shrugged his shoulders and said, sometimes we get what we deserve. I just stood there with my mouth half open, not able to think of anything to say. Even if they’d had a falling out, his reaction and response was needlessly cruel, and it made me see him in a whole new light.

One’s true friends are revealed in times of trouble. Job’s friends heard, and their first reaction was to come to be with him, comfort him, and mourn with him. They didn’t send flowers or a card; they went out of their way and put their lives on hold to travel to where Job was and see what, if anything, they could do to help him in his moment of need.

Job 2:12-13, “And when they raised their eyes from afar, and did not recognize him, they lived their voices and wept; and each one tore his robe and sprinkled dust on his head toward heaven. So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.”

These three men did something Job’s own brothers hadn’t, which was to come to him and be with him in his time of devastation. Yes, Job had brothers; we are told this in the latter chapters of the book, but the only people to show up were these three friends. Surely, Job had helped a multitude of people closer to home along the way. He was, after all, a generous man who gave freely of his goods, yet none came to offer words of comfort in his grief. He was forgotten and dispensed with as soon as they saw nothing they could benefit from him by way of the material.

When doing a kindness to someone, whether a stranger or a friend, it’s instinctual to expect reciprocity, or at the least gratitude. Sometimes, you don’t get either, and this is why we are commanded to do all things as unto the Lord, knowing that He keeps track of it all and will reward us in due season. If we are generous or magnanimous because we expect accolades or for someone to return the favor, we’re doing it for the wrong reasons anyway and will have no part of the reward we otherwise would have had.

Choose your friends wisely. It is advice I’ve received over the years from various gray-haired souls, and I’ve taken it to heart. Too many nowadays let people who ought not to be into their inner circle just to boast that they have so many friends. I’m neither cold nor standoffish, but it takes me a while to call someone my friend because I have to know that they truly are. Once that occurs, and I call someone my friend, I’m as loyal as a shelter-rescued pit bull. Yes, that type of loyalty has come back to bite me when those to which I’d shown loyalty did not reciprocate in kind, but I know of no other way to be.

We are not made privy to how many friends Job had before his season of testing, but we know how many he had during his travails. Three. Three men put their lives on hold and came to Job after hearing of his hardship.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.