A thank you would be nice.

If just once she’d be the one to call first.

Could I just get one kind word? 

What encourages you? Any of the above? Maybe you’re like a young teammate I had once who, after a discussion of Gary Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages, had trouble choosing just one. He liked them all. Sadly, encouragement of any kind is too often in short supply. We wonder where, in my life, are the people who held up Moses’ arms? I just want a phone call. 

I wonder how people in the Bible encouraged each other. The word is found often but not always with a specific example. Keep meeting together. Uplift the disheartened. Share what you have. Sing and read scripture together. Pray for each other.

Then I read Paul’s words in Romans and I wondered how both he and his friends and me and mine are to be “mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.” 

As I wish for the phone call or text or acknowledgement, what is going on around me? Anything mutually encouraging? (For some, the mutual part will be discovered in heaven.) 

Friends who hold fast to their faith surrounded by hostile co-workers. 

A young woman in her 2nd year of cancer who takes food and her listening ears to the homeless. 

The man who sings in front of me each Sunday and fills his Bible with notes.  

The freshman who goes to her first retreat with a student group. “I think it was called a spiritual upgrade.” 

The mom who raised her children to know Jesus and one by one they each reject the faith she prayed they would receive. Still, she prays. 

The young father who travels to remote villages to teach at a tiny church. “I try to be wise so they’re not shut down. I’ve never had to spend the night in jail.” 

The man who fasts and prays over the divisions in his church. 

I’m made of clay. Some days I still want the hug. But really, doesn’t it pale in comparison?