On being a friend
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I read somewhere once that human beings are not individuals that choose to relate to one another but that we are inherently social creatures…we are made for friends. I remember also reading someone commenting that they were not looking for a friendly church but a church where they can make friends. So what is it about friends that we value so much? We need to take care in using the word friendship as it can imply an almost abstract quality or principle, as in “ I am looking for friendship” or “our friendship is going through a rough time” etc. “I am looking for a friend” or “my friend and I are having a rough time” has a more personal, intimate and in my view valuable sense to it. It keeps central the unique person on the other side of this conversation, the other partner in this dance, the other traveller on this journey. The gift of friendship is actually the gift of a friend.
This week there are three friends whose lives are touching mine. I’ve just spent 4 days with an old friend from Canada who I’ve only seen twice in twenty years, I am celebrating the wedding of daughter of a friend whose children grew up with mine in their early years, and I am speaking at the funeral of a dear friend who came late into my life and I into hers. Three very different people with whom I have walked, celebrated, prayed, dreamed, cried, struggled and worked together. We’ve all seen ourselves as part of something bigger and our friendships have been framed and inspired by God’s love for us and this amazing but broken world we live in. We have explored together the mystery of God and his ways and there is no doubt that this pull towards something beyond ourselves has given us a sense of a quest, friends together on a mission.
Perhaps it’s this common commitment and even sacrifice in a struggle to make a difference, in some great endeavour that can seem too big for us on our own, that forges the bonds between friends. For I and my three friends mentioned above this took a variety of forms. A decades-long conversation and dream of making the bible and Christian faith accessible to modern culture. Raising gifted and strong children in an exciting but challenging world. Leading a local church into reconnecting with its community and making a difference once more. All three friends are people of hope who have faced at times insurmountable difficulties, and yet have a wonderful sense of humour, serious about the important stuff, light about the vast majority of stuff that is not so important. They have also shown a deep care and interest in my family and I, a genuine compassion and love which warms my heart even now as I write this. It is just so wonderful to matter to someone else and to have someone else that matters to me.
And perhaps it is this ‘mattering’ that gets to the core of why friends are so important. Such mutual valuing and appreciation in what can at times be a cold and competitive world reminds us that who we are and not what we do or achieve is ultimately what gives meaning and security to our lives. Having friends who accept us as we are and who we accept as they are acts as a powerful counter narrative to the utilitarian and contractual view of relationships that marks much of our day to day dealings with people. Circumstances brought us into each other’s lives and circumstances have taken us physically apart from one another. For a season we lived in the same place and put our shoulder to the same challenges and the riches of those years and memories are what add to the layers of our life’s stories. And in the meantime we pray “Mizpah…may the Lord watch between us while we are absent from one another”.
Heaven is here, and earth, and the space is thin between them. Distance may divide, but Christ’s promise unites those bound by time, those blessed by eternity.
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