A friend of mine is having life-changing troubles and he has come to me for help. We’ve talked at some length about what’s going on in his life, the pros and cons of this course of action or that, the best way to do what needs to be done. He’s a very thoughtful and sensitive man, not prone to impulsive or childish decisions and he’s thought this through many times, but he’s stuck.
He came to me as a friend, which we both believe is the highest honor any person can achieve. At the ground floor, we’re people, all of us. As we age and grow, we add levels of humanity to our lives, and if we live the way we should, one day someone will call us friend. There is nothing higher than that. So when he came to me, friend to friend, I was humbled and proud to be given the chance to help.
The decision he faces isn’t unusual and it isn’t immoral, although it’s the moral edge of it that causes so much anguish. If we’re taught that something is right, always right, and then we discover that no, no it isn’t always right, we’ve walked into a dilemma. Do we believe what we’ve always been taught or do we believe what we can see, right there in front of us, right there inside of us?
Do we dishonor our teachers when we reject their lessons, or do they dishonor us when they refuse to see what we see, what we feel, what we know? Is it disrespectful to tell our teachers that this time they’re wrong, just this once? If we can’t properly voice what we feel and our teachers won’t try to understand what we struggle to say, what do we do?
Those are the questions my friend gave to me, and his voice was heavy with crying. He knows what he has to do, but knowing what’s right doesn’t always make it easier, so he came to me, his friend, and asked me to pray for him. At that point my own voice got a bit heavier and I told him I pray for him all the time, most often in micro-thoughts that I know God hears and welcomes.
When we pray for someone, the prayer doesn’t go unnoticed. The simplest prayer (“I hope he’s okay”) is directed to the same God as those prayers that burn with emotion, and the ears that hear mine also hear yours. The God that I know will react to our prayers in the same way that a friend will react to another friend who is asking for help. I would never say no to my friend, nor would he say no to me.
Friendship is love and I will help my friend. The things that he prays for, the faith and certainty that God will help him, are the things I pray for, for him and me. When the sun shines again for him, and the faith he doubted is his once again, he has to know that it was his prayer, from beginning to end, that was heard.