Are there any friends so precious as those with whom we have experienced some kind of mutually shared suffering? I think of programs I’ve seen showing gatherings of World War II veterans. There’s something in their faces, something in their eyes, something in the way they speak to each other, that reveals a bond that goes far beyond that of fraternity brothers or even most church members. I won’t claim to know anything like what they know, but I think this past Saturday evening, I at least had a taste of it.

Faces. Faces reflecting the fire. Faces that have seen fire before, felt it together. Gathered around a bonfire in a Virginia sheep pasture are friends whose lives had been somehow fused into mine by the heat of that “other fire.” For the first time since our former church had experienced wrenching changes that left those in this circle suddenly cast overboard, we were all together in one place. One of the former leaders of that congregation, out of a truly pastoral heart, had made it possible for us to be there. Almost all invited came. They knew, like those old veterans, that you didn’t turn down the “band of brothers (and sisters!)”

We sang the songs we’d always sung. We shared from our lives. We prayed. Nothing much different from what we did together in brighter days. And yet there was a profound difference. In some way, we had been through a war together, and we had survived to tell about it. Some of us still had a “limp” from “shrapnel” that hadn’t been completely cut out. Some of us couldn’t stop weeping for the “buddies” left behind. Some of us felt like we might be looking for the rest of our lives for what we knew when we were serving together.

Now at the risk of stretching this “war buddies” metaphor a step too far, let me bring in one last essential character. Sometimes in those documentaries, there’s a moment that stands out in the midst of all the unspeakable connections that are taking place among the vets. It’s that moment when the “old man,” the commanding officer, enters the room. He’s the one that went first out of the trench into the gunfire, who pulled their wounded bodies back behind the lines, who held them as they shook with grief over a buddy who wouldn’t be coming back. When he enters the room, the idle conversations stop, the shoulders go back, and everyone stands a little straigher.

So at that sheep pasture around that bonfire, we all knew we were glad that we had a great CO. One who took our wounds as his own was there with us, so we could have courage for one another. We could even sing, and even laugh a little. We remembered that the “Old Man” always pulled us through.

Romans 15:5-6 May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 1st, 2004 at 11:18 pm and is filed under Christian Community, It`s All About Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.