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God’s help through friendships

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labour: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up” 

My relationship with my ‘friends’ has never truly been the best. Friends are quoted because I don’t think there ever truly were my friends, only people I was around enough to let time pass by. There are people in our lives that should only be there for a season, but for me, it seemed like I kept people that should have left, only because of fear of loneliness and because of comfort. We are called to love everyone, but we also are called to surround ourselves with people that bring us up, not bring us down.  

Recently my mental health hasn’t been the best. Being in a state of sadness, my natural response is to isolate myself. When I do isolate myself, I isolate completely, even from God. Over the years, I’ve realised that through my isolation and my lack of communication to God, He still speaks to me. He tells me “You're not alone in this” and “it will get better”, maybe not verbally, but through the friends that I have. Friendships are God’s communication of saying that this life is not meant to be lived alone.  

Looking more closely at the verse, we are shown a dual relationship is better than a singular one. It tells us that this dual relationship is “a good return for their labour”. You’re probably assuming that this can only be interpreted from an agricultural perspective, but I think much more can be read through this. “Labour” can be synonymous for work, and work can be related to life. The lives that we live are hard work: on a day-to-day basis, there will be things that make things difficult and may make us want to give up, however our friends are there to help us in those times. 

God calls for community and collaboration because it’s an extension of His character. We see it throughout scripture because God wants us to know the value of it. The trinity is the first relationship we see at work in The Bible. During creation, there is a collective terminology that we see: “let us”, which means there is more than one person at work. If we see that God is invested in community, why can’t we embody the same thing? 

 

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