To rub shoulders with, idiom, expression
1.) To meet and talk with (someone) in a friendly way.
“Though the pair had only rubbed shoulders once before, they were quickly becoming good friends.”
My father was a horologist by trade. I suspect the word horologist is a mystery to many of you; perhaps as esoteric as the line of work itself. In the common tongue, so to speak, my father was a watchmaker.
I often thought of my father as a mechanical surgeon of sorts - for indeed he was. The degree of skill and knowledge that resided within my father’s mind, coupled with his vast precision in the field, was simply unparalleled.
As a watchmaker, my father fixed clocks, built clocks, and collected clocks. Ever since I was a young child, the ticking of timepieces far more ancient than myself could be heard as their innerworkings resounded from one spectrum of our home to the other; an orchestra of time, bending their strings of brass gears and metallic springs in perfect harmony.
Well, near perfect harmony. Some clocks were broken, and it was my dad’s job to fix them. That meant that, sometimes, it struck midnight three or four different times in our home throughout the day.
Though my father was a watchmaker, he would often admit that horology was no great passion of his. He did his work well, but his heart found joy in other things: his Lord, his family, working with his hands and tools on a piece of lumber, and in music. My father absolutely delighted in music; his heart and lips were overflowing with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19). There seemed to be no hymn that my father did not know the tune to and no instrument that he did not know how to play at least half adequately.
When I was a teenager I took up the guitar (and set it back down within a number of days, might I add). One evening, while I was struggling with the positioning of my hands on the strings, I asked my father if he would help. As was his custom, he walked over and simply asked for the guitar. After familiarizing himself for a moment with the instrument, plucking here and there at the strings, he began to play a song - it was rudimentary, but good enough that I was able to make out the tune. When I asked how he managed such a feat, much less when he had time to learn the guitar, he merely replied, “I never learned. I just thought it was like the piano and turns out it is.” He then handed the guitar back to me and walked away. Needless to say, I set the guitar down shortly thereafter and took up writing instead.
My father was also an avid whistler - a trait that he, perhaps to the chagrin of my wife, passed on to me. Indeed, there ever seemed to be a tune in the air when my father was around. I remember his soft whistle, like silk, cutting through the air at his shop on King Street, in our barn, as he did yardwork - wherever he found himself, really.
In an effort to bring these various threads together (my father’s work as a watchmaker, his love of music, and his penchant for whistling), I’d like to share a story he once told me. Some years ago, a customer strolled into his shop seeking service for a timepiece. The man was quiet, softly and kindly conversing back and forth with my father as he inquired about the piece and the work that was needed. My father, being the expert he was, quickly deduced that the issue was relatively minor and that it would not take long for the work to be done. The man, my father said, was welcome to linger in the shop while the work was being done, as it would only take a few minutes.
At this point in the story, I always imagine my father slipping on his glasses, sitting down, and gliding on his rolling chair across the floor to his rolltop desk where he began working. As was often the case while he worked, my father fell into his pattern of whistling some hymn or tune as his focus narrowed on the timepiece before him. However, after a few verses of my father’s composition, he ceased whistling the particular hymn that he was on midway through and continued his work in silence.
Within a moment, however, the tune was picked up again from across the shop by the customer walking idly between the clocks on display. After a verse or two, the man stopped whistling and continued to browse in silence. My father, without turning from his work and no doubt with a smirk on his face, began whistling another hymn, this one somewhat more obscure. He stopped whistling after a few seconds, and sure enough, the song continued as though it had never ceased from across the room as the customer continued browsing the clocks on display, whistling away while he was at it. This song and dance continued as my father worked and the man waited, with each hymn selected by my father growing more and more obscure - testing the man, as it were. Without fail, this mysterious customer picked up each and every song, almost as though he and my father were whistling with a single voice.
“All done”, my father said after a few minutes, pushing away from his chair and walking towards the man with the fixed timepiece. The pair exchanged a few words, the customer paid, and then he disappeared out the door as softly as he had arrived. To my knowledge, my father never saw the man again.
Though this mysterious man had only rubbed shoulders with my father the one time, he had nonetheless left quite the impression on him. There was something about this man, my dad had said, that struck him deeply.
Perhaps one more thought along this point just to underscore how curious this encounter was. My father was born and raised in Eastern Europe. This meant that the vast library of hymns he knew were by no means restricted to English tunes. German, Serbian, Romanian, Hungarian - my father knew of many songs in many tongues. What made his chance encounter with this particular customer so interesting, so mysterious, was the fact that the customer was not only well-versed in Christian hymns, but in Christian hymns from multiple languages. Indeed, no matter how determined my father was to stump the man with some far-off, ancient hymn, this customer always found his way through the tune.
Life is full of such encounters. You rub shoulders with a soul, perhaps only for a moment, and then your paths never again cross. And yet, just sometimes, there exists within these brief encounters a touch of some unknown and mysterious quality; a mingling between souls that cannot be put into words, though it is felt deeply. It is as though some unspoken reunion takes place, though you and this soul have never met before, and perhaps will never again see one another in this life. The beginnings of a friendship take root, one that flashes here below for but a moment, only to burn on forever in eternity. An unending rubbing of the shoulders, so to speak.
I like to think that we will have best friends in Heaven. Surely, our best and dearest Friend will be the Lord Jesus; He is the One to whom all the sweetest friendships here below point. And yet, this reality remains: you and me and billions upon billions of other souls will live in the New Heavens and the New Earth forever and ever. We shall need a good while to get to know one another, don’t you think?
Even in our glorified state, clothed in our resurrection bodies and without sin, we will never ascend to the heights of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. That is, in Heaven we will not be all-powerful, all-present, or all-knowing; such glory belongs to God, and God only. And so, it would only stand to reason that we will, in some sense, have to rub shoulders with one another throughout the endless ages in an effort to get to know each other. We will not have the luxury as creatures - even as glorified creatures, but creatures all the same - to know all people instantly upon simply meeting them, or have the capacity to engage in countless friendships in a single moment. We will, just like in this life, have to put in the hard work of friendship.
Furthermore, does it not also make sense that, within the bounds of sinless perfection, we shall become closer friends with some souls over others? Have you ever considered, truly considered, this glorious reality? You, dear reader, and I, and all who are in Christ, will enjoy life abundant without end throughout all of eternity. A trillion ages shall pass and we will yet still be rubbing shoulders with one another as though the day has only just begun to dawn. Such a thought is enough to make any man tremble for a moment; we cannot possibly grasp the sheer enormity of it.
My wife and I often jest that, provided we do not pass together, we will wait for the other to ‘arrive’ in Heaven. After all, Heaven will be an awful big place and it would be a shame to lose one another. As you can imagine, her and I have already settled that, after our Lord, we will be each other’s best friend. As in the swell of family and friends on our wedding day, we are determined to not lose track of each other, no matter how many shoulders we may rub along the way. I write all of this lightheartedly, but with a great sense of seriousness also. For while we can only begin to imagine what that other world will be like and how it will all work, it is good to rest in the truth that the Lord knows what He is doing - all will be well. Not just well, but perfect.
When we who are in Christ meet our journey’s end and knock finally on that last door, it will be opened to us and we shall be greeted by all that has ever escaped the longing of our souls. The burning within our hearts will at last be satisfied in Him whom we saw from afar through the eyes of faith. And then, a great deal of dances which have been cut short shall be taken up once again, this time with no whisper or threat of an end to come. We will see those familiar faces once again, now filled with joy and looking well rested, almost unrecognizable, just as we shall be. The white shores and far green country of the New Heavens and New Earth, clothed in a swift sunrise never to set, will be our new home. A country upon which trillions of souls will dance and sing the song of the redeemed; a sea of saved sinners, the fellowship of the King. Mothers will dance with their sons after all those long years apart; husbands who lost their dance partner long ago will find them in the ballroom once again, their lovely wife, their friend, waiting for that dance that was cut short so suddenly; little sisters will again stand on their big brother’s shoes as they are whisked across the dancefloor for the ages to come; and following the tune of some far-off though familiar whistle as it cuts through the air, sons will at last look upon the face of their father and friend that they have missed ever so much, picking up that deep talk right where they left it, as though it had never been interrupted. There too will be a vast number of folks we have never seen, never known, and never danced with here below, those with whom we only briefly rubbed shoulders with; but we shall get to know them just fine - for remember, we will have time enough to perfect the dance of friendship over there.
“But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him’” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
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