Christian Friendship Modeled in the Life of Lady Janet Colquhoun

By Jeannette Paulson

Feminism has cast its spell over us and we are in a Sleeping-Beauty stupor. Though we are waking up, we still have many questions about what true Biblical femininity looks like. Some of the best guides may be the lives of God-fearing women in the past. One such woman, from Scottish nobility, is Lady Janet Colquhoun.

Here is how she modeled Christian friendship.

As a young bride she discovered in her neighborhood few among the nobility “in whose intercourse she could find spiritual invigoration or intellectual enjoyment.” There was a prejudice against evangelical Christianity. ”Card-parties, elaborate carriage airings, and the news of the neighbourhood [read gossip] were the recreations of their wives and daughters.” These visits left Lady Colquhoun with “repentant misgivings in her devout and conscientious mind.”

Though Lady Colquhoun was kind to these neighbors, she would not make them her close companions. She chose to decline invitations and “her religion increasingly became communion with the Saviour. And it left her more leisure for that employment into which she had thrown all her soul — the instruction and training of her children.” This also drew her with special tenderness to commune with some of the believing poor in the parish. She moved outside of her social class to find something more significant: Christian fellowship. When one poor friend pointed out their difference in class, Lady Colquhoun said that after they died, were buried, and had turned to dust, anyone digging up the dust would be unable to tell which was which.

Lady Colquhoun shared a love of plants with the daughter of Dr. John Stuart, the parish minister. Miss Stuart was engaging both socially and intellectually. ”But, in that amiable and ardent mind, Lady Colquhoun quickly recognized an affinity more precious still. Miss Stuart’s thoughts were deeply occupied with those great truths in which she herself had found all her salvation and all her desire; and ….when they met they took every opportunity to commune together on the things which pertained to their everlasting peace.”

Do you have a friendship like that?

If you don’t, ask God to make you such a friend and then, if it pleases him, to give you such a friend.

Similarly, Lady Colquhoun impressed on her children the importance of Christian friendship. In one journal entry she says she was “much distressed with the fear” that one of her daughters had formed an “improper acquaintance.” ”After fervent prayer, spoke to her, with tears, on the subject, and she gave me every satisfaction I could wish, seeming willing to do what I pleased. Oh, my God! protect my children!”

Christians need to choose friends carefully. David says in Psalm 119:63: “I am a companion of all those who fear you and of those who keep your precepts.” May God grant us to waken to our need for Christian friends and hold them as precious as Lady Colquhoun.

A great book on Christian friendship is Face to Face by Steve Wilkins, where he lays out the necessity, blessings, characteristics and hindrances to Christian friendship.