Who is a close friend?
I’ve had diverse friends all my life. Growing up, I always had close friends for a season, but only for a season. It bewilders me even now as to how I lost so many friends along the way. My best friend in school was someone with whom I played after school, and even played some nasty pranks on. We shared lunches, rode on the school bus and did study sessions in each other’s homes. We practically did everything together. We even teamed up and did one-act plays for our school events from time to time. During one such act of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, for reasons unbeknownst to us, one by one, the characters began to quit. I was to play Shylock but seeing the others leave, I began to wonder if I should play my part or leave too. Few minutes before the play began, I realised that the show was going to flop. I slyly slipped back stage and scooted to the back row of the audience. My dear and poor friend pulled through the entire play, switching costumes as Antonio, Bassanio and Shylock, all the while being ridiculed by a thoroughly entertained crowd. At the time I was ashamed of being part of the play. Now I feel ashamed of abandoning my friend in a time of need. But she was a close friend. After all that was said and done, she did not abandon me. She stuck around me. Truly I was the Shylock, and she the Antonio.
But I lost her in time. I looked everywhere to renew my friendship with her but in vain.
Come college, and I had close friends with whom I had deep bonds. Some were Christian, some were not. But they all loved me. I lost them too, with time. I practically know the whereabouts of none but one.
I’ve had close mentors with whom I no longer have any contact. Providence kept us all apart, and for a good reason.
There was one friend, however, who somehow stuck with me through my college years and all through my life. He stuck with me through thick and thin. There was a season in my life when I may have even said goodbye to him, but God prevented that from happening. Thankfully, I married him!
When I survey all the close friends who have come and gone in my life, I see something of myself. I can see that God made me for deep communion and friendship. No man is an island. No Christian can closet himself from the need for a church. In a long-drawn era of a pandemic, we are prone to sail adrift into a churchless Christianity. Worse still, we become what I call “cocktail Christians”: we pick and choose parts of the church we like and discard the rest, including people we think are difficult. This topic deserves a whole another post. Later.
Strong relationships cause many of us to thrive in life. David, though singularly mighty and charismatic as a leader of God’s people, needed Jonathan to complete him. Without Jonathan, David could have never completed the call of God on his life (1 Sam 18:1-4). We need friends who build the trust enough to speak truth into our lives, whose wounds we count as a blessing compared to the facade of many companions (Prov 27:6, 18:24)
Sometimes, we need to have healthy friendships with those of the opposite sex. We must not think that all close friendships need to end in marriage! We can have a close friend who is also a brother or a sister. Timothy was encouraged by Paul to have such a healthy boundary and relationship with the women folk around him (1 Tim 5:2). He wasn’t to keep distance, but honour the women in his life. Paul did the same by calling Prisca, Euodia and Synteche as his fellow workers, working side by side with him (Rom 16:1, Phi 4:2-3). Jesus our Lord constantly had women companions in his ministry. When he was tired, He found comfort in his friends Lazarus, Martha and Mary. He would often retreat to their home in Bethany. Jesus never needed friends, but he made many friends for the Kingdom’s sake.
God gives friends for adversity. He comforts us through companions. I’ve known friends who have done nothing but sit beside my husband’s bedside during his darkest hours and listen to him and pray with him. Oh the balm that they were! Yet, often even close friends cannot enter the depths of our soul’s valleys.
Sometimes, God chisels a dark soul-way that only His footsteps can tread.
I have been reminded more often now than ever that when God desires your friendship, He invites you to suffer. In those moments, I find myself running from pillar to post looking for a human friend, when all the while God has been whispering to me , “Come to me, you who weary and are heavy laden…” I now desire and thirst this even more as friends keep shifting and moving into the distant past and times are trying. Loneliness welcomes Jesus with arms wide open. The Psalmist has been reminding me lately as I have been singing and humming in my soul, “Close friendship with the Lord will all who fear Him know, the knowledge of His covenant He unto them will show” (Ps 25:14).
God draws us into His Bosom in the vale of tears, as I hear him whisper to me,
“Come, die with me!”