On Faith and Values: Kindred spirits: Friendship is a holy gift

During my wife’s surgery and subsequent physical therapy through the early part of this year, I watched with amazement and gratitude as her friends showed up almost nightly at our door with delicious homecooked meals or restaurant take-out for us to have for dinner. Some even stayed and ate with us. It might have been the best solid month of eating of our lives, so I managed to only be somewhat bitter that Cathy had asked them not to include dessert.

Now that the kids are grown, we don’t cook much, and I’m actually contemplating signing up for some kind of major organ transplant just so Cathy can alert her kitchen-savvy friends.

It takes real love to be a real friend. Our family went through the loss of my Dad about three years ago, and a friend of one of my sisters flew to Pennsylvania from Florida for just one night to show up at the visitation the evening before his funeral.

That kind of friend is a miracle. Cathy’s friends feeding us for a month was a miracle. Certainly, those two circumstances were out-of-the-ordinary, but the groundwork had been laid for the miraculous because those folks had track records of being there for the ordinary as well. When that’s the case, folks can easily become family. I’ve heard it said that family members often don’t grow up under the same roof and that, too, is a delightful miracle.

So is just having someone in this world who knows and still loves you. To have or to be a friend is a great gift, but it’s more than that, too. To me, it feels like an absolute must: I need people who know where I’ve been and where I’m coming from, who don’t shy away from just about any subject, and who will share what’s on their own hearts, too. And I like to think that they need me for the same reasons. To make a new friend is exciting, ripe with potential; to have an old friend to talk “back in the day” with is a treasure.

I’ve come to believe that one of the reasons that we find friendship so life-giving is that there’s also an element of holiness to it. I hadn’t thought much about that until recently, when I read these thoughts on friendship by the late pastor and author Tim Keller: “Before anything existed, there was friendship…[it] was never created. There was never a time in which friendship was not, because from all eternity, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit were knowing and loving and delighting in each other. Friendship is at the roots of reality. It’s at the bottom of all things.”

I love that Keller thinks of friendship and faith as being so intertwined. If having and being a friend can be so integral to the faith I profess, if it’s actually a sustaining force for the Trinity, then maybe it should be integral and a sustaining force in my life, too.

Because what’s a better description of living a life of faith than this picture of friendship painted by Scott Sauls, in his book Befriend?: “Real friends see each other as long-term companions and give to each other the rare gift of long-term loyalty. Instead of using each other, they serve each other…In real friendship, the flourishing of other people takes priority over our own goals and ambitions.”

Or this more familiar one, from the apostle Paul: “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.” That’s often read at weddings, but I think its meaning goes well beyond spouses (though it’s helpful if they’re friends, too).

Going forward, I’m hoping to be more conscious of who I cross paths with, both purposefully and randomly, and of offering them friendship, even if only in passing, because friendship is a holy gift.