Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 312 · November 8
Born for Adversity
“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”
It is half past eleven at night in a hospital car park. Somebody who has driven ninety minutes to be there is sitting in the passenger seat with the engine off, holding a paper cup from a machine and saying nothing in particular. That is all they can do, and it is enough.
"A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." The verse has two lines, and Hebrew proverbs often use the second line to say the first one again in other words. Read that way, it describes one person: the friend whose love "at all times" turns out, on a night like that, to be the brother "born for adversity." Read the other way, it names two people. Either way, the verse reaches two different readers.
The first reader has somebody like that, and has never once called on them. You would drive the ninety minutes for anybody on your list, but you have arranged your life so that nobody ever has to drive it for you, and you call that being considerate. Ecclesiastes is blunter: "woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up." Friendship runs both ways, or else it is only service, and service can fade away without anybody noticing what was lost.
The second reader has done the sum late one night and could not come up with a single name. Proverbs does not make that sweet either. It knows how friendships break: "A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city." And it says the practical thing about distance: "better is a neighbour that is near than a brother far off."
So here is a blessing for both of you, and it goes in opposite directions. To you who have never let anybody sit with you: may you let someone in, because the wall you built will stand until you take it down. To you who could not come up with a name: may God put you in a car park at half past eleven for somebody you have not met yet, and may He give you the friend you have been missing. Proverbs also says that "there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother," and Jesus told His disciples, "I have called you friends." "At all times" covers the years before your next friendship begins, and He is with you in every one of them.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 312 is The Character of Love (1 Corinthians 13:4-5).