In The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey Henri Nouwen writes: “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.” In other words, we show up for each other. More than mere words, we practice the ministry of presence in the body of Christ. And that showing up is necessary especially during seasons of difficulty.

Pain hurts, but it also dulls our memories. It increases our already large propensity to forget the fundamental truths of the faith we know to be true. During those times of suffering, we feel most alone. We feel the most forgotten. We feel the most forsaken. Through the people continuing to show up, we can be reminded of our God. Our God who loves us. Our God who is in control. Our God who cares deeply and walks with us. Our God who bends low to weep in the dirt.

In a sense you could say that the church is a string around its own finger.

When I can’t believe that God was still with us, my memory is jogged by the persistent presence of others. When I am tempted to forget that God cared deeply for us, the tears of our friends make His love more real. When I think the world is spinning out of control, the calm assurances of the people remind me of a God who has a purpose and a plan. This, I think, is the truth John wrote about in 1 John 4:11–12: “Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us.”

It’s not as if God’s love is deficient in some way, that He needs us to put His love over the top. Rather, when we show up for one another, the invisible reality of the love of God becomes visible among us. The presence of our friends remind us of what our pain threatens to make us forget: God never stops showing up.

In the kingdom of God, we are meant to take responsibility for one another. It’s not one person versus the world. We are meant to live life not as one but as many. We are the body of Christ. Together, that’s why we show up for each other—it’s because in Jesus, we have been inseparably joined through our common faith in the gospel. When someone wants to slip away into oblivion, God’s solution isn’t necessarily a miraculous end to the pain but rather that those people around them can remind them of the invisible realities of God. And we all need reminding from time to time. That’s why we live life together.

— Taken from my book Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal: A Boy, Cancer, and God available here.