Come sit down beside me, I said to myself. And although it doesn’t make sense, I held my own hand as a small sign of trust and together I sat on the fence.
- Michael Leunig
It's a beautiful thing to befriend yourself. It’s important, in order to be truly content.
But it’s even more beautiful to enjoy friendship with others. Friendship is what makes life rich, purposeful, divine even.
Having committed friends is a gift we’re not always recipients of in life, but when those friends come our way, we treasure them.
Yes, it’s good when you have a friend who gets you, and even when they don’t, still like you. It’s good when you have a friend who listens and cares. Friends who can empathise even if they’ve never walked your journey. Friends who think you’re great on your best day and still believe in you on your worst. Friends who walked in when everyone else walked out.
We all need those people who challenge our thinking, yet support our convictions. We need people who don’t undermine our indecision and know us well enough to guide us towards what we authentically believe. We need friends who laugh and cry with us, occasionally at the opposite times. We need friends who understand our need for serious thought but don’t take our fussing too seriously. We need Salty people in our lives.
Friendship is eventful, breathing magic into the dull moments and refreshing life.
We can try to be the best friend we can be when we’re the recipient of the best friend in the world.
There is a proverb that says, “a man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24).
Many companions come and go and don’t really care about our misery. We can be easily misled if we care about numbers of people around us. But a brother helps us to recognise our misery won’t last, and is present, trekking with us through our ups and downs from start to finish.
Our greatest friend and brother crossed the barrier between heaven and earth, and He’s still there, waiting for us to receive His friendship fully. He loved us first (1 John 4:19). He came to us first (John 1:11, John 14:8). He’ll never leave us (Hebrews 13:5).
Every time we love, we touch God.
Every time we receive love, God touches us.
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