Nourishing hearts as faithfully as we nourish our tables.
Happy May, my friends, and I do mean that! As we all come out of hibernation from the winter months and start saying hello to our neighbors again, I thought it would be good to chat about friendship.
“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.”
Proverbs 17:17
All throughout my life, I have been unequivocally blessed with friendships. Through the years I’ve had co-workers and others ask about mine, genuinely curious. And I get it.
We were made for relationship. Genesis tells us it was not good for man to be alone, and I believe that extends far beyond marriage. Yes, my marriage is my number one relationship behind God, and next come our boys. But my friends? Don’t be messing with my friends. I truly do not think I would have survived the years without them.
It started as far back as grade school. Maybe it’s because I only had brothers, three of them. They are great brothers, but from everything I understand, not the same as sisters.
Through the decades, I’ve come to see that there are three types of friends: seasonal friends, lifetime friends, and friends who are closer than a sister. Proverbs 18:24 puts it beautifully: “There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” And I hope that I have treated all of my friends, no matter what stage of life they came into or walked out of, with respect, dignity, and delight.
“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.” Ecclesiastes 4:9-10
Over the years, people have asked me, and not because I brought it up first, they did: “How do you make and keep such good friendships?”
It’s a great question. My answers have shifted slightly over time, but I keep coming back to something simple, almost embarrassingly so: to have a friend, you have to be a friend. Nothing new here, but a lot of people just want a friend, not be a good one.
And really, that’s just love in its most practical, everyday form. John 15:12 says, “My command is this: love each other as I have loved you.” Friendship, at its best, is just that playing out in real life.
But here is the thing, knowing that friendship matters and actually knowing how to show up as a good friend are two very different things. Next week, we are going to get into the nitty-gritty of what that really looks like, the honest, sometimes uncomfortable, deeply worthwhile work of being a true friend. Salt and light, friends. That is what we are called to be, even in our friendships.
Closing thought: If you are reading this and feeling like true friendship has been hard to come by, I want to encourage you. Start by being the friend you wish you had. Show up. Listen. Stay. And if you need a model for what that looks like, look no further than Jesus, who called His disciples not servants, but friends. That is the standard, and it is a beautiful one.
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