Friend

F is for Friend

It was the last day of 7th grade and my best friend was moving to Jamaica. I felt like my heart was being ripped out. Who would I giggle with long into the night? Who would I sit with at lunch?  We promised to write – to keep in touch.  It’s been thirty years since I last saw her.  I’ve looked for her on and off over the years, but turned up nothing.  My heart still misses her.

In High School, I have memories of being the first one on the school bus and begging the driver to wait just one more minute for my best friend who was running out the door with shoes in one hand and a sandwich in the other –again.  She was in my wedding – and then… I guess life just happened.   I miss her. I still have the hand towel with a kitty on it she gave me at my wedding.

Same story in college.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” C.S. Lewis

Now as an adult I am blessed with some wonderful women in my life that I am privileged to call them friends. They put into my life in practical ways as well as encouraging me, challenging me and making me a better person.But all human friendships have limitations. I risk the sorrow, for it’s far better than having a heart that is unbreakable.

A few years ago, I discovered this amazing truth: God wants to be my friend.  God – the one who is unchanging, always available, will never leave me or forsake me?!  When I first heard, “I am a Friend of God!” By Phillips Craig and Dean, I remember thinking – Does it say that in the Bible?  Skeptical, I came home and looked it up. Here’s what I found.

“You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” John 15:14-15

“And the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God.” James 2:23

 

 

God,
I’m so humbled and amazed that you would want to be my friend.  You are so far above me and yet you want a relationship with me?  I can not grasp how the King of Kings and Lord of Lords cares about me personally.  Yet, you have been that to me. Your Word changes me. Your power frees me from the chains that have enslaved me.  You have been the best, most awesome-st friend in the world to me.  And, unlike human relationships, my friendship with you can last forever.  I pray I would be worthy to be called your friend.  I want to obey your commands and live righteously. Thank you, Jesus for being my forever friend. I love you. -Nancy