Job 19:14

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"My familiar friends have forgotten me." Job 19:14

What does this amount to? As a social fact it was simply ruinous. A man without friends is without fellowship, confidence, hope. What is a house without windows looking out upon the lighted landscape? What is it to have great thoughts, and yet to have no listener, into whose eager ear the high music can be poured? Job is therefore not mourning something that is of no consequence, but is lamenting one of the most serious incidents that can occur in social experience. Still, spiritual advantages may accrue from loss of friends. When friends are gone we begin to inquire what can be left; and if in our desolation we find that God remains behind in all faithfulness and love, we may say with Christ, "I am alone, yet not alone, for the Father is with me." What a lesson is this upon the whole subject of friendship, not friendship of a common kind, but friendship which involved former familiarity and almost oneness of thought and sympathy! Let us take care upon what staff we lean. We should remember that the best of men are but men at best. We see, in this instance, how friendship was dependent in a large degree upon circumstances. There are fair-weather friends, and there are friends whom no foul weather can drive from our side. There is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. It is the peculiar glory of Jesus Christ that he has promised to be with us for ever, not a casual friend, not a day-long acquaintance, not a mere passer-by, but to abide with us and see us through all the cloud of time and the valley of death, and bring us into the sunlight of eternity. To be forgotten, how sad a case is that! At first, it would appear to be a simple impossibility, yet we have known it as a lamentable fact; the memory has cast out names which it once prized. Let us see to it that when we are forgotten, it is not for moral reasons; let the ingratitude be on the other side. There comes a time when it is right to forget a man who has broken every commandment and turned a deaf ear to every expostulation; even Jesus Christ appoints a time when an offending brother is to become a heathen man and a publican. As to forgetfulness, we ought to search into its quality, lest there be bidden within it anything of the nature of unthankful-ness. Never forget a benefactor or a benefit. To think of the sacred and fruitful past is to make the present glow with a holy influence. God will not forget those who remember him. God is not unrighteous to forget your work of faith and labour of love. When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. Our conscious loneliness will be among the chief of our blessings if it lead us to consider whether the blessing of God is not available. Let our friendships be rooted in intelligent conviction, deep moral sympathy, congeniality of spiritual tastes, and even the roughest wind will leave them probably unbent, certainly unbroken.