Iron Sharpening

For Friday, December 7, 2007
Proverbs 27:17

Iron sharpens iron,
and one man sharpens another.

The image is that of a sword or some tool being sharpened by a whetting iron. Unlike the neighbor of verse 14 who shouts out shallow blessings or the quarrelsome wife of verses 15-16, the "iron" friend is one who listens and then has the good hardness to give constructive counsel, even if it needs to be critical.

The iron friend's goal is to sharpen his friend, to make him a useful tool for service or a good weapon for battle. He himself must be hard, not in the sense of being uncaring but of having strong enough character to a couple of ways. One is to be strong enough to care more about telling his friend what the friend needs to hear, rather than saying only what the friend wants to hear. He must be one made strong from having going through his own difficult struggles, so that he has good counsel to give.

Do you have such a friend? Are you such a friend? It is not easy. Iron hitting iron can produce sparks and at the least be grating (pun intended). But that is what friends are for. To be there for one another to support and to sharpen one another.