Friends sitting with arms around one another

FRIENDSHIP IS A GIFT

Make new friends but keep the old.

One is silver, the other’s gold.

“A friend loves at all times.”

Proverbs 17:17

I had a delightful experience the other day.

I had lunch with a dear friend I met at work 50 years ago!  We worked together for less than five years, but we were very close.  We’ve kept in touch over all this time, though we don’t see one another very often.  But what amazed me was after hugging and greeting one another, we sat down and picked up our conversation as if we hadn’t been apart.  We fell right into the rhythm of our friendship, chatting comfortably and understanding each other right away.

A similar occurrence happened just about a month ago.  My husband and I attended a reunion with friends we went to church with some thirtyish years ago.  Most of these folks we hadn’t seen in all that time, yet after greeting one another, we again fell into the rhythm of friendship, chatting happily about all kinds of things—some topics light, some deep, all sincere.

This got me thinking about friendship and what a valuable gift it is.  This gift comes from God, who gives us our friends for a purpose.

God created us in His image as relational beings, not meant to live alone. 

Life is richer when friends are a part of it.  Good friends increase our joy and help lessen our despair.  They offer us support when needed and can help us grow and reach beyond ourselves. 

We are wired for relationships.  Did you ever see the movie “Cast Away” with Tom Hanks?  Tom’s character, Chuck, survives a plane crash and makes it to a deserted island.  A volleyball floats in from the wreckage, and Chuck inadvertently leaves a bloody handprint on it with the image of a face.  He carried this volleyball around, talking to it and calling it Wilson.  Over time, Wilson the volleyball became like a real companion to Chuck, so that when it was washed away during a storm, Chuck literally grieved over the loss.  That’s how profoundly we are designed to have relationships.

We were created because God wanted a relationship with us. 

He placed within us what some refer to as a “God-shaped hole.” Only God can ultimately fill that hole, although we sometimes try to fill it with other people or things.  But we’re never fully satisfied unless we invite Him to fill that hole.

A loving relationship with God is primary to our having other loving relationships.  The Bible says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.” 

To have genuine love in our relationships, we must first love God. 

Can you love someone else without loving God?  You can give it a try, but it’s not as easy.  That’s because when you love God, the love He pours into you spills out, giving us the grace to love others.  When we love under our own power, there sometimes is not enough love to sustain the relationship when the going gets tough.

The second thing needed to love one another is to love ourselves: “And the second [commandment] is like it:  Love your neighbor as yourself.”  It’s challenging to love others when you don’t love yourself, and many of us lack self-love.  We have no supply of love from God within us to give.  We’re doing it on our own, and eventually, we’ll grow tired when trying to love others.

If you have good friends you love, consider it a gift from God that keeps on giving.

I feel blessed beyond measure when it comes to friendships.  In addition to the friendships I described above, God has given me several lifelong friends, and theirs is my most special type of friendship.  We gals have known one another practically all our lives—well over 60 years for each of us.  To say we have been through thick and thin together hardly begins to describe our depth of friendship.  But what blesses me most is that we have seen one another in every possible circumstance and situation—angry and ugly, sad and broken, and joyous and free—and we still love one another and desire to remain friends.  This blows my mind! 

You cannot manufacture this kind of friendship—it is a gift from God, designed from His desire for us to have loving relationships, reflecting His love for us.  I pray that you will love and enjoy your friends today!

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Hi, I'm Jean!

I love writing about what Jesus has done in my life to help encourage others.  I live in the Chicagoland area with my husband, Hal.  We’ve been married for over 50 years.  We have two married sons, five grandchildren, and a little dog named Charlie. I also own a virtual assistant business called Jean’s Virtual Administrative Solutions.