Coming clean, being open and honest—this was our focus in a recent Bible study (centered on Psalm 51). At some point in our discussion, a friend shared this bit of wisdom, a pithy adage from Alcoholics Anonymous: “Telling someone cuts it in half.” Be it a challenge, irritation, or temptation, just telling someone about it significantly reduces the size of our problem. Articulating our burden clarifies heretofore nebulous feelings, and confession aligns us with the truth of the matter, a vital step on the path to victory. Moreover, “telling someone” removes the added weight of a load carried silently alone. Though none of the rest of us were in AA, we all “got it,” for overwhelming challenges are part of the human experience, and we need help.
Solomon observed, “Two are better than one . . . For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!”1 The king’s wisdom is worth pondering, yet it is actionable, as well, and Paul calls us to it. “Bear one another’s burdens,” he exhorted, “and so fulfill the law of Christ,”2 which is to say, love practically and give sacrificially—something Jesus lived out to the ultimate. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,”3 He told His disciples, and less than 24 hours later, Jesus did exactly that: He laid down His unblemished life to take upon Himself the otherwise irradicable burden of our sin. May we never balk at mere inconvenience again.
My friend described alcoholism as “above all else, a disease of isolation,” yet insobriety is not its only affliction—whether as a root or a symptom, isolation affects us in ways too many to mention in this space. This is not the way we are called to live, rather as Paul wrote, “we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”4 Adds Solomon, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.”5 So let us live into our oneness in Christ—a place where burdens are shared, loads are lightened, and Christ is glorified.
There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.—Proverbs 18:24
Father, it is easy to regard other people’s struggles from a distance, and it is easy to distance ourselves from others. Forgive us. Lead us in unity and wisdom, that we would live and love as one in Christ. In His name we pray. Amen.
1 Ecclesiastes 4:9-10
2 Galatians 6:2
3 John 15:13
4 Romans 12:5
5 Proverbs 17:17 NIV
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Paul Nordman—Author 