Unfair Weather Friends

In 2015, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson released an album together called “Django and Jimmie”. Of course, I bought it - not for Willie, but for Merle’s sake. On that album is a song called, “Unfair Weather Friend”. It describes the friend who shows up when everything is dark and bad and proves his fidelity in adversity. That, by the way, is the measure of a true friend.
Real friends show themselves to be so, not so much when we enjoy their company, as when their company is a sort of necessity. It is when we need them to be there to hold us up, not merely hang out with us, that we see why we really love them and call them our friends.
Proverbs 18:24 says, “…there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.” I have often heard that phrase applied to Jesus, and rightfully so. He is a friend of sinners, and being a friend of sinners (of whom I am one) He is faithful to them even when the weather is not fair in their lives. He is a friend to them even when the bad weather is of their own making. I bless Him for His surpassing friendship to me, and I long to be that kind of friend to others as well. I want to demonstrate and replicate the grace and mercy of unfair weather friendship.

In Harper Lee’s novel, “Go Set a Watchman”, Uncle Jack Finch tells Jean Louise (the grown up “Scout”), “…the time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right.” It is easy to be a friend when your friends are right. A friend to those who are wrong, however, is a true friend and one like the truest Friend I’ve ever had.