Personal Friendships of Jesus

by J. R. Miller

"Things that hurt and things that mar
Shape the man for perfect praise;
Shock and strain and ruin are
Friendlier than the smiling days."

How about ourselves? Life is made very real to our thought when we remember that in all the experiences of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, success and failure, health and sickness, quiet or struggle, God is making men of us. Then he watches us to see if we fail. Here is a man who is passing through sore trial. For many months his wife has been a great sufferer. All the while he has been carrying a heavy burden,—a financial burden, a burden of sympathy; for every moment's pain that his wife has suffered has been like a sword in his own heart,—burdens of care, with broken nights and weary days. We may be sure of God's tender interest in the wife who suffers in the sick-room; but his eye is even more intently fixed upon him who is bearing the burden of sympathy and care. He is watching to see if the man will stand the test, and grow sweeter and stronger. Everything hard or painful in a Christian's life is another opportunity for him to get a new victory, and become a little more a man.

It is remarkable how little we know about the apostles. A few of them are fairly prominent. Peter and James and John we know quite well, as their names are made familiar in the inspired story. Matthew we know by the Gospel he wrote. Thomas we remember by his doubts. Another Judas, not Iscariot, probably left us a little letter. Of the rest we know almost nothing but their names. Indeed, few Bible readers can give even the names of all the Twelve.

No doubt one reason why no more is told us about the apostles is that the Bible magnifies only one name. It is not a book of biographies, but the book of the Lord Jesus Christ. Each apostle had a sacred friendship all his own with his Master, a friendship with which no other could intermeddle. We can imagine the quiet talks, the long walks with the deep communings, the openings of heart, the confessions of weakness and failure, the many prayers together. We may be very sure that through those three wonderful years there ran twelve stories of holy friendship, with their blessed revealings of the Master's heart to the heart of each man. But not a word of all this is written in the New Testament. It was too sacred to be recorded for any eye of earth to read.

We may be sure, too, that each man of the Twelve did a noble work after the Ascension, but no pen wrote the narratives for preservation. There are traditions, but there is in them little that is certainly history. The Acts is not the acts of the apostles. The book tells a little about John, a little more about Peter, most about Paul, and of the others gives nothing but a list of their names in the first chapter.

Yet we need not trouble ourselves about this. It is the same with the good and the useful in every age. A few names are preserved, but the great multitude are forgotten. Earth keeps scant record of its benefactors. But there is a place where every smallest kindness done in the name of Christ is recorded and remembered.

Long, long ages ago a beautiful fern grew in a deep vale, nodding in the breeze. One day it fell, complaining as it sank away that no one would remember its grace and beauty. The other day a geologist went out with his hammer in the interest of his science. He struck a rock; and there in the seam lay the form of a fern—every leaf, every fibre, the most delicate traceries of the leaves. It was the fern which ages since grew and dropped into the indistinguishable mass of vegetation. It perished; but its memorial was preserved, and to-day is made manifest.

So it is with the stories of the obscure apostles, and of all beautiful lives which have wrought for God and for man and have vanished from earth. Nothing is lost, nothing is forgotten. The memorials are in other lives, and some day every touch and trace and influence and impression will be revealed. In the book of The Revelation we are told that in the foundations of the heavenly city are the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. The New Testament does not tell the story of their worthy lives, but it is cut deep in the eternal rock, where all eyes shall see it forever.

On the lives of these chosen friends Jesus impressed his own image. His blessed divine-human friendship transformed them into men who went to the ends of the world for him, carrying his name. It was a new and strange influence on the earth—this holy friendship of Jesus Christ started in the hearts and lives of the apostles. At once it began to make this old world new. Those who believed received the same wonderful friendship into their own hearts. They loved each other in a way men had never loved before. Christians lived together as one family.

Ever since the day of Pentecost this wonderful friendship of Jesus has been spreading wherever the gospel has gone. It has given to the world its Christian homes with their tender affections; it has built hospitals and asylums, and established charitable institutions of all kinds in every place where its story has been told. From the cross of Jesus a wave of tenderness, like the warmth of summer, has rolled over all lands. The friendship of Jesus, left in the hearts of his apostles, as his legacy to the world, has wrought marvellously; and its ministry and influence will extend until everything unlovely shall cease from earth, and the love of God shall pervade all life.