We use the term “friends” loosely in our everyday speech, even referring to people we really don’t know well as friends. There’s even a “Friending Help Center” for Facebook users, which, it should be added, does tell us to add people we know and trust. We ask ourselves, who is a friend? What are the elements of friendship?
Reciprocity is essential to friendship. Friends are friends with each other, and develop their relationship through nurturing each other. They give and receive from the other. We really have very few intimate friends, persons with whom we share our personhood, good and bad. Then we have a wider circle of people we call friends with whom we share parts of ourselves.
The old hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” illustrates the nature of friendship, for with our most intimate friends we can share our sorrows and griefs. One lesson from the pandemic from which we are still emerging is that friendships suffered, even in this age of internet communication. Even as we may still mask in public places, we need to re-energize our old friendships. Friendship is necessary to being human.
Prayer for the Day
Give us grace, we pray, to be like true friends,
People of faith healing each other’s hurts and bearing each other’s pain;
Grant that we may have the imagination, we pray, to look beyond the limits
We often set for ourselves, thinking nothing can help.
Bestow on us strength, we pray, to live each day with courage and hope,
So we are open to the world as you present it.
We ask this in the name of the One who is our true friend,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen
Thoughts for the Day
A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.
- Elbert Hubbard, American publisher and writer (1856-1915)
I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.
- Helen Keller, educator, humanitarian (1880-1968)
Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil.
For if they fall, one will lift up the other;
But woe to the one who falls and does not have another to help.
Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone?
And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand it.
A threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12