Photo by Amanda McConnell (2011) via Pixabay, CCO Public Domain. Text added by Erin Franco.
They say that you should be kind to everyone you meet, because you never know who may be fighting the hardest battle of her life.
Many people I know are going through something difficult right now. Some of them are fighting the most difficult battles of their lives, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at their Christmas cards or Facebook posts. So many of life’s fiercest battles are fought in private: within a marriage, within the mind, or within the walls of the home.
As surely as I have my own unseen struggles–the ones that only me and God and sometimes Michael know about–I know that my friends, extended family, and acquaintances have theirs.
God puts people into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Over the years, as people have come into my life and sometimes out of it again, I look back on different seasons of my life and see God’s fingerprints weaving my life together with the lives of others. It is a special consolation when God reveals a little bit of the beautiful tapestry He is working on with you.
Join me in praying regularly for the circle of friends and acquaintances in our spheres of life right now.
Let’s ask God to show us who in our lives may need some extra prayers or support. Let’s be open to those little promptings of the Holy Spirit to send a handwritten note, an email, or a checking-up-on-you text message every once in a while (or go all-out and old-fashioned and pick up the phone!). Let’s be quick to smile, slow to assume, and slower to judge.
Finally, let’s be intentional about the apostolate of friendship, and by simple kindness and faithfulness in our relationships help carry one another’s burdens.
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