Proverbs 17:17
“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”
Reader, have you lost a friend--the chief companion of your mental powers, an intimate of your heart? When near, how oft you sought his company! When absent, companionship, if possible, more intimate was kept with ink and pen. But now your fellowship has ceased, and you are left, a mourner of no trifling order--you feel a blank unutterably void. To find another such were hard; to seek another such by rule--perforce to make a friend of someone or another to supply his place--say, could you do it? Your heart rejects the thought. The link that bound your hearts together, refuses to be forged on such an anvil. The train of subtle circumstances that made you friends, cannot be reproduced at will. Such friendship is a solitary thing. If a brother dies, you may have a brother still, and at the family-home you find your consolation. But a friend, a bosom friend--leaves none behind to take his place, for friendship goes not in groups of family connection; and when it dies, it leaves neither kith nor kin to represent it, with the friend who is left to mourn.
May I ask you, reader, if you are comforted, and where you seek your consolation? You feel the truth of what Solomon has said--"A friend loves at all times" (Proverbs 17:17). You say, "That pictures forth my friend, yes, to the very life. His love was constant and sincere--in times of woe, he ever wept with me; and in times of prosperity, he made my joy his own."
Again, I quote from Solomon--"A man who has friends must show himself friendly; and there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother" (Proverbs 18:24). Does this make you think still more of your departed one--in how many ways he proved his friendship? Brothers may have stood aloof in your adversity, nor offered help which was at their command; but your friend proved better than a brother. He never forsook you; he stuck to you throughout. Did I say better than a brother? Yet not than every brother. Blessed be God, there are brothers who minister as friends and brothers, in concentration of all that is generous and kind, whether in brotherhood or friendship--all honor to their bounty and faithful love!
My friend, I question not your loss, either in kind or in degree. But have you ever sought the friend, the Heavenly friend, who loves as no one else can do? Think what a friend he is! From Heaven He came to save you, to bear your sins "in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). What other friend has done, what other friend could do, as much as this--to suffer for you on the Cross? Say, can brother stick to brother, or friend to friend, after a sort so friendly? Your friend, you say, loved you at all times. Does not Jesus do the same, and in an infinite degree? What moment do you not sin? What moment have you loved Him, thought of Him, as you ought? And yet what moment has He not thought of You? In your prosperity, he thought of you. He thinks of you in your present grief. He knows your sorrow, and even now would be your Comforter. One only thing He waits for--that you should seek Him as your friend.
Would you know His friendship's worth? Consider what Jesus has done to prove Himself your friend. This you require to know for a double reason--the pardon of your sins, and for present consolation. The day is coming when earth shall pass away--when earthly friendships shall have no further place--when all must stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, to receive the things done in the body, whether they are good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10). Then make the Judge your friend. "Kiss The Son, lest He be angry" in that great day, "and you perish from the way when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him" (Psalm 2:12). Then seek a friend In Jesus. Faithful and true you will find Him--faithful in life--faithful in death--faithful to all eternity!
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