Life is a theater, so invite your audience carefully. Not everyone should be given a seat in the front row of our lives.
Some years ago, the speaker at our annual women’s retreat opened with this quote. The idea of being mindful of the people we allow to exert influence in our lives continues to come up in conversations. Your front row isn’t just friends or people you admire. It is not your tribe. Your tribe is a broader range of close relationships. Your front row is the people you trust to actually speak into your life. You have given them access because you regard them as prayerful and wise, with the ability to provide good, solid counsel. This is no small thing.
Job and His Front Row
By chapter three, the foundation of Job’s sorrows has been laid. Job will settle into a pit of ashes, as mourners did in those days. He will sit and scrape his grotesque body—and grieve. The only remedy would be death, and God will not permit that.
But Job is going to have visitors. They will travel from their distant homes and arrive weeks later – older men who are old friends. And they have been in the front row of Job’s life. When they arrive, they will sit silently on the ground and grieve with him for a week. What unfolds in the many chapters to follow are lessons in pride, judgment, false assumptions, and, oh yes, TOO MANY WORDS.
In much of your talking, thinking is half-murdered. Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-American writer
Job has not realized how the men in his front row have changed. He was, by now, in no condition to consider these aspects of those relationships:
- First, it is YOUR front row. Not everyone gets a seat.
- Second, it changes over time in the ebb and flow of life’s seasons.
- Third: It is as much about quality as quantity. More is not necessarily better.
Our calling as friends is a spiritual calling. Job was cruelly provoked by the very men whose words and presence should have been a balm for his wretchedness. Wielding any kind of influence in the life of another is a serious thing. Wisdom, caution, and prayer are vital.
There is another important aspect to these relationships: Our front row should be able to speak the truth to us in love. Remember:
Truth without love is brutality. Love without truth is hypocrisy. Warren Wiersbe, pastor/writer
And when we find ourselves on the front row of someone else’s life, the power of words should never be far from our minds:
A word spoken at the right time is like fruit of gold set in silver. Proverbs 25:11
For twenty years, I had a group of women on my front row who were a source of joy, comfort, and challenge to a degree I would be hard-pressed to truly describe. Shared from a prayerful, thoughtful spirit, the words they spoke and the prayers they prayed were life-giving. They brought enormous consolation, and helped lighten the load. And, to be clear, those companions had the freedom to offer loving correction—or even warning–as they saw the need.
Regardless of the season of life, an audit of our front row is a good thing. And teach your children and grandchildren about the value of this holy kind of friendship and how they might one be day valuable occupants of that place in someone’s life. Fruit of gold will never lose its value.
In subsequent posts I will be thinking with you as Job’s grief intensifies and his friends, instead of comforting him, pass judgement with shocking abandon. Not good to be them.