A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity (Proverbs 17:17).

There's an old adage that says something like, "You'll know who your true friends are when you see who shows up at your house when it's time to move."  The false friends will stay at home or call in some other excuse for why they can't make it; but the true friends will drop whatever they're doing, clear their schedule, and put in long hours of back-breaking work to help you during a time of transition.  Personally, I've found this to be a very effective litmus test -- though I might add a few other circumstances to the list as well:  "You'll know who your true friends are when you see who shows up at your house when it's time to move... or who shows up to visit you in the hospital... or who testifies in your defense, when others are throwing slander and accusations in your direction."  These types of situations -- when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable to put love into action -- are when we find out who's really a friend, or a brother.  The old adage about moving day is absolutely correct... But it's really just a specification of the even older adage from Proverbs 17:17:  "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity."

It's unspeakably painful to experience loneliness on top of whatever type of adversity one might be experiencing.  I know this from personal experience.  But thank God:  I also know about the power of friendship and brotherhood in times of difficulty!  And it really does make all the difference.

Foremost in my mind is a situation from several years back, when my wife's parents were suddenly and unexpectedly forced to move out of the farm-house in which their family had grown up.  The problem:  we were 4000 miles away, living on the opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean, and it was right in the middle of a season of work and school from which we could not easily disentangle ourselves.  The situation seemed genuinely hopeless; we felt powerless in the midst of it all.  But thank God for our friends!  Faced with the impossible situation, we contacted some old friends from the church we had called home during our last years in Ohio (a church full of eager, able-bodied college students), and they immediately jumped into action -- to an extent that we honestly never could have imagined.  A team of ten men and women -- our old friends, spiritual brothers and sisters -- mobilized for the occasion and traveled not once, not twice, but three times down to help Marci's parents (a three-hour round trip from where they lived).  It's hard to fully describe, but it felt so good to have friends working for us on the far side of the ocean during such a time of adversity.  In Amsterdam, too, our friends rallied together to help provide supplemental child-care and practical support to our family, so that Marci could travel back to Ohio and help her family through the transition.

The whole situation brought a great deal of contentment and hope in the fact that I'm part of a big, beautiful, spiritual Family that's able to extend past the conventional constraints of time and space. My hands might have been tied, figuratively speaking, "holding down the fort" in Amsterdam -- but my membership in the Body of Christ allowed me to have hands that were available, able, and active to help my extended family in such a time of need.  Their help went far above and far beyond the work of some ordinary "volunteer work force," or even the work of well-paid hired hands.  In that less-than-ideal situation, we learned that our friends applied themselves like true family.  Like the Family of God.  The Body of Christ.