I’ll Go With You

Every Sunday morning at Rock City Church, we recycle our worship guides after the service. Very few people leave the service without dropping theirs into one of our recycling bins. From there, an amazing team of volunteers sorts, stuffs and repacks them to be used again in another service. Occasionally some notes left behind or scribbles on a page will find their way into our recycling. This morning, one of those team members handed me a page similar to what I described above because it had to do with our baptism a few weeks ago.

The page is filled with an apparent conversation between two friends. One is asking the other if she would like to be baptized. The other is resisting the invitation. I’m being 100% honest when I say I didn’t read the entire note. It’s really none of my business. Yet as I folded it up to properly dispose of it, four words at the bottom of that note caught my eye.

“I’ll go with you!”

Call me sentimental. Call me crazy. Something about those four words struck me. Maybe it’s knowing how many people need that one friend. Maybe it’s wishing for that one friend too. Maybe it’s fears. Maybe it’s insecurity. Something about those four words captured my eye and I’ve been thinking about it all day. Literally, all day. I just climbed into bed for the night and it was still there. I had to get up and put this in words.

“I’ll go with you!”

In a social media driven world filled with “friends”, “likes” and “followers”,  how many of us can look at those lists and identify a friend that would say “I’ll go with you” in real life?

To that doctors appointment

To that counseling session

Through the valley

To that mountain top

Again, maybe it’s just the very short list I could think of when I read those words, but we all need at least that one friend. We all need that person that throws caution to the wind, their list of “to-do’s” in the trash and says “whatever you need, I’ll go with you.” As Bob Goff said, we need someone that says -

“I wasn’t a project, I was his friend.”

As you start a new week, let me challenge you to think about who you are that friend to. Who is that friend for you? Do they know they are? Do they know that YOU are? Again, quoting Bob Goff:

“I learned that faith isn’t about knowing all of the right stuff or obeying a list of rules. It’s something more, something more costly because it involves being present and making a sacrifice.“

Or, simply saying “I’ll go with you….”