November 2010

Dear Family of faith,

Which would you choose: a million dollars or one good friend? The events of the past few weeks made me ponder that question.

Ever since my wife, Jill, returned in mid October from spending time in New England with our new granddaughter, she has had back pain which remains, to this date, undiagnosed. A visit to our General Practitioner resulted in an anti-inflam-
matory drug. The pain kept getting worse. At first Jill could not stand; then she could neither sit nor stand without great pain. Last week she could not escape excruciating pain in any position. We called the doctor; three days later he called back. In the meanwhile Jill had been taking some pain pills from a prior prescription. By the time the GP said that he would contact an orthopedic specialist, Jill was down to one pill left, and that wasn’t giving her any relief. When finally we spoke to the specialist’s office, they told us that the first available appointment was November 2nd!

It is a horrible experience to see someone you love writhing in pain, knowing that there is nothing you can do about that pain. Not only that, but the prospect that such trauma was not going to last just one day, but for weeks was terrible. At that point in time all the money in the world would not have brought relief; the medical system was simply unresponsive and unavailable.

Then I remembered…I remembered that life is not about things but people. I recalled that I had a friend who had been living with severe back pain for years. I called him, and he was willing to share some of his stockpiled medicine to help Jill go on with living. (As a young homeless boy put it a couple days later when I engaged him in a conversation outside the Brandon Mall, “You gotta do what you gotta do!”)

At the time of this writing Jill’s appointment with the orthopedic doctor is still more than a week away, and her appointment with a pain management specialist is more than a month away (again the earliest available date!) The reason that she can walk, eat, go to church again, and sleep is that I had a friend.

Dear people of God, recent social studies have revealed that the social networks in our country are shrinking fast. The percentage of Americans who say that they have no one with whom to discuss important matters rose from 10% in 1985 to almost 25% in 2004. The number of adults ages 45-49 who claim to be lonely is a whopping 43%! Even in the church we can feel alone. What should we do about it? Cultivate friendships!

No one should ever sit by himself or herself in worship. If you come to church alone, sit next to someone else! Talk to each other; eat together during the Fellowship Hour. Seek out people with whom you can relate. Way back in the Garden of Eden God said that is was not good for us to be alone. Jesus called his disciples “friends,” and he called the church to be a community of support for each other. Let me put it this way: If you miss worship one or two weeks and no one notices, you don’t have enough friends! Work on it! In the end you will discover what I did—that one good friend in a time of need is worth more than $1 million!
With affection,
Pastor Carlan