FRIENDS (Hebrews 10:23-25)

Shame on me. Less than a week into my blogging exploits and I've already missed a day. Tsk Tsk. Is there no end to my incompetence? Anyway...it's 3:32AM as I write this (I did indicate my affinity to the night, did I not?). I have nothing really ground breaking to share. I just wanted to give you blog addicts another morsel to chew on.

I was thinking just a little bit about friendship earlier tonight though. Genuine friendship is one of the greatest pleasures this life affords us, in my humble opinion. Some family are friends. All true friends are family. How many times in my life would I have been unable to summon the courage and strength to continue, had it not been for the selflessness and kindness of friends who stepped in and saved me...carried me...when the weight of my burdens were simply too much to bare. It's one of the most vivid indications we have of the sometimes seemingly unrecognizable love of an intangible God. The kindness, generosity and compassion of friends, invested into our lives, are some of the ways that an invisible God makes His tenderness and affection toward us as plain as day.

Will I accept it as such? Will I allow myself to receive it...when asking for or accepting help is a painful reminder of my vulnerability? Will I become it for someone else? To literally be the physical arms of a spiritual King, and lavish on my friends the goodness He gives. No man is an island. So the saying goes. Let us choose our friends wisely. Let us subject ourselves to their counsel prudently. Let us let go of the fallacy that we can do life alone. Technology has decreased the gaps between cultures, countries, and continents...yet the gap between me and my neighbor is at the risk of being greater than ever before. Friendship. Let us celebrate it. Cultivate it. May it be part of the mortar that holds us up and makes us strong, even as we hold up and strengthen the friends who help us along.