FRIENDSHIP

Paul Meredith Via Bulletin Gold

Genuine friendship is one of the deepest hungers of
the human heart. We innately seek out friends who
have understanding, love and unwavering loyalty. True
friendship is too rare and too precious to neglect, too
infrequent to forget, and too sacred to carelessly cast
away.

Jeremy Taylor wrote, “By friendship you mean the
greatest love, the greatest usefulness, the most open
communication, the noblest sufferings, the severest
truth, the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of
minds of which brave men and women are capable.”
The value of friendship is truly tremendous. Euripides
said, “Life has no blessing like a prudent friend.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “Fame is the senseless
sunflower with gaudy crown of gold; but friendship is
the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.”

Proverbs 17:17 says, “A friend loves at all times, and
a brother is born for adversity.” A little later in the book
of Proverbs we see a further parallel between a “friend”
and a “brother”: “There are friends who pretend to be
friends, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a
brother” (18:24). This dramatic kinship imagery is
employed in order to solicit a stirring of our emotions.
By comparing friendship to the powerful bond of blood
brothers, the intensity of its significance is emphasized.
In other words, God wants us to realize how
tremendously important friendship is in each of us.

Let’s be sure to value our friends and let them know how
much we appreciate them. Also, let’s be sure to be faithful
as friends and companions. John 15:13-15 says, “Greater
love has no man than this, than to lay down one’s life for
his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I
command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a
servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have
called you friends, for all things that I heard from My
Father I have made known to you.” Are you a friend to
Jesus?