Friendship - Part Seven

Friendships are usually deliberately built, cultivated, developed with effort and last for extended periods of time. Friends celebrate and suffer together. The music of dance and dirge mingle as friends share life experiences. Friends anticipate how to be helpful, determine to be present when needed, and wishes they could share more than is possible.

Occasionally, however, someone enters our life, unanticipated, and only briefly. Momentary friends are not fickle or unfaithful, they are apparently designed as God’s gift to us for a season, and are gone. As the building now called Resurrection Life Church was being readied for use, we needed painters, professionals with ample experience and equipment. At that point, a mutual friend introduced me to Billy Donnely, a person whose personal and business experience highly qualified him.

I hope to never forget the afternoon when Billy Donnely appeared at Resurrection Life. He banged, I thought impatiently, on a secured door until I opened it to his broad smile and staccato, “Hi, I’m Billy Donnely! Bob Monreal said I might be able to help. I’m looking for a Pastor Wegner!”

After the initial greetings, Billy and I walked through the building’s 20,000+ square feet while I explained how we dreamed how we would use the space. Colors, finishes, time lines and costs were discussed in sweeping terms. Billy pressed me on the kind of congregation we envisioned, the neighborhood, and my personal experience with Jesus. Pentecostal doctrine and practice ranked high among Billy’s priorities. He also questioned me about different meetings he had attended and what I thought about a variety of preachers, including his pastor. He shared in some detail about being delivered from drug and alcohol abuse and being wonderfully transformed by the power of the Spirit. He was, and is, an enthusiastic follower of Jesus. But, Billy’s last words before departing were, “Pastor, this is a huge job. I just don’t know how I can help you.”

When I went home that evening, Pat asked, “How did it go with the painter?” My response was a tepid, “I don’t think anything will come of it.” I just sensed that Billy and I were not a “match!”

Was I ever wrong! The very next day, my cell phone rang and Billy announced quickly, in an “I’m-a-busy-man-no-nonsense” manner, “Pastor, I went to my suppliers and got them to donate all the paint. I have rounded up five of six painters and we will be there two weeks from Saturday. I think we can knock out your project in a couple of Saturdays!” And, they did. More than a dozen painters and helpers completed a project that could have easily cost more than $50,000.

Billy Donnely moved on. Still involved in his church, Billy has since established a home for recovering alcoholics and people addicted to drugs. He qualifies as one of those momentary friends who enrich our lives, one from whom we learn and then moves on. I hope you have experienced as an expansive array of friendships as God designs. Friends make life better and blessed!