Friendship.

Thursday, Feb 19, 2009. I love to be together with friends. To some extent I am quite lucky - I have a number of people which are my friends. I really like them, I enjoy to be together with them. My friends are sometimes far away, I see them only occasionally. That is not a difficulty for keeping the friendship. When we meet each other it is as if we had been together just recently. Sometimes we even do not need to make friendship official. Its just there, without words. Friendship can be a wonderful thing.

Friendship is important for Jesus. This is quite interesting. Jesus called his apostles “my friends”. He wanted this kind of relationship which is full of trust, where people are willing to strongly help each other, be there for the other person and provide resources, time or help where necessary. But friendship is different from just help! Friendship often needs some kind of resonance in interests, activities or our view on the world. We cannot be easily a friend to someone, just because some person might attend the same church as we do, for example. A friendship can develop when we get to know some other person more closely.

There is an old church song: “what a friend is our Jesus”. It is sometimes seen as a little strange in its pious attitude. But there is some sincere core and lasting hope in it: God wants to be a friend to us, and he wants us to be a friend to the people around us. Where friendship develops, a miracle takes place. This can be a reality every day, a miracle growing over time. I do not know many better promises than the promise of friendship in faith. [R.P., Reading, UK]

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