I Have Friends on Facebook But Would I Get Out of My Comfort Zone To Help Them

In our free store conversation on Friday morning we talked about Jesus parable in Luke 11, "Suppose One of You Has a Friend."  The gist of the story is that a man goes to a friend's house at midnight and bangs on the door asking for three loaves of bread.  The guy knocking on the door has a friend that has arrived on a journey and he doesn't have anything to feed his friend.  The friend that is being asked for the three loaves basically says "Don't bother me" and gives a number of very good reasons that he can't help.  Ultimately the guy does get out of bed and give his friend what he wants but not because of friendship but because of his friend's "importunity," "persistence" or "shamelessness."

We started the conversation by noting how inconvenient friendship can be at times.  Our friend Robert made us laugh when he shared how his wife is a very social person and likes to go out with friends a lot but he wonders, "Are they really friends or just acquaintances?"  He also said, "I have friends on Facebook but would I get out of my comfort zone to help them?"  At this our friend Jack said that there is "situational friendship" as well as "degrees of friendship."  He also said that he has been married to his wife Julie for 45 years but they don't always do everything the other person wants. One thing we all seemed to identify with was the idea that real friendship often goes beyond what is comfortable for us.

Someone thought it was unusual that a guy would knock on a friend's door at midnight asking for bread.  We laughed when someone said that the convenience store must have been closed.  Someone made the point that it seemed like in Jesus' time people were more dependent on each other for what they needed and there was more of a sense of community than we have today.

We talked a bit about why the guy that was being asked for three loaves of bread ultimately gave it to his untimely friend.  One translation said that he did it because of his "importunity" but no one knew what that meant which made us laugh.  Another translation said it was because of his "persistence" and someone else had a translation that said it was because of his "shamelessness."  However, every translation we had agreed that the guy didn't do it out of friendship.  So we thought that maybe the guy just knocked on the door and made a nuisance out of himself until his comfy friend inside was forced to give him what he wanted to shut him up and get rid of him.  We also talked about how the guy asking for bread at midnight was certainly willing to act "shamelessly" on behalf of a friend that had a need he couldn't personally meet out of his own resources.

In bringing the discussion to a close we talked about how many times the needs of our friends will exceed our own resources to help.  But does this mean we should do nothing at all?  Or is it possible that we might begin thinking about acting "shamelessly" on behalf of our friends that need what we can't personally provide and be willing to "beg" our friends that do have resources to help.  Someone also brought up that Jesus told this story after his friends asked him to teach them how to pray.  We laughed when Robert said that if the first guy had three loaves of bread he wouldn't have needed to ask his friend for anything and maybe we shouldn't even think about praying until we have nothing left to give.