During a recent conversation in my hometown, I asked a businessman about his sister. She and I had gone from kindergarten through graduation together. In our small, tight-knit town, that meant birthday parties with Barbie cakes, sleepovers, and years of growing up alongside one another. We lost touch after graduation, but in our southern Indiana way, you never really lose the connection.

He looked at me solemnly and told me that his sister was seriously ill.

 Seriously.

Our encounter changed in that moment. I could not quite regain my composure, and I don’t think he could either. I gave him a handwritten note and asked him to give it to his sister. I told him that if she wanted to call or reach out, I would welcome it. She did. Almost immediately. And this renewed connection has become a blessing to me.

More than forty years have passed—isn’t forty a biblical number?—yet beneath all those years there remains a constant affection. Old friends are witnesses to our lives. They remember the people we used to be, recognize the people we have become, and somehow love us across the distance between the two.

My prayers for her are deep and longing. She is the one who is sick, yet somehow I am the one being touched in the depths of my soul. She is real. She is honest. And there is something about an old friendship that allows little room for pretense.

I look at the sunlight reflecting across my patio and think of her. I know that same Light is shining in her heart, illuminating the lives of those she encounters.

And there it is—the upside-down blessing. I thought I was reaching toward an old friend to offer comfort. Instead, God reached through an old friend and gave something to me. Perhaps that is one of the mysteries of God’s economy. We set out to give and discover that we have received. We offer comfort and find ourselves comforted. We reach across forty years and discover that love has been quietly holding the thread all along.

So ask about the sister. Make the phone call. Write the note.

Do not underestimate the holy possibilities hidden inside an ordinary encounter. God’s economy is rich in unexpected places.

“A cord of three strands is not easily broken.”
—Ecclesiastes 4:12

Prayer

Have mercy, O Lord, have mercy on those that crave your mercy, give grace unto them that stand in need thereof, and make us such as that we may be worthy to enjoy your grace, and go forward to life eternal. Amen. —Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471)