This post is the second of a four-part series based on the message about friendships that I shared in chapel at Grove City College on February 9, part of the college's Focus Week on relationships. To listen to the complete message, click here.
When I was young, I distinctly remember my mom encouraging me not to use the term "best friend." So, although I have had many wonderful friends over the years, I've never given any of them the label "best friend." I love this idea that we can have lots of friends at the same time, and we don't have to label them with superlatives. Of course, we may be closer to some than others, but this mentality allows many people to play different roles in our lives.
While last week's focus was companionship, this week is deep friendship. In his book The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis writes this:
"Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest [...] The typical expression of opening friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one.'"
When I was a freshman at Grove City, my companions-turned-close-friends were my two roommates and two other triple rooms located right below ours. We sent group emails and reply-all responses to figure out which cafeteria we were going to for dinner. They waved to me distractingly when I was giving campus tours. We had a lot of fun together - taking friendship seriously does not mean that it has to be all serious! - but our friendship was and continues to be centered around praying for one another, encouraging one another with Truth, and demonstrating Christ's sacrificial love.
Although we went in all different directions after graduation - literally across the country and around the world - we continued the reply-all emails, in which dinner plans were replaced with life updates. We have had several reunions, not just to relive college memories, but to create new shared experiences and pray for one another in our current contexts. These women are friends for life, even as we have made other new deep friendships.
One of my favorite aspects of life in Germany was the community. There were certainly frustrations and complications of living and working and sharing life with the same people, but for me, this was a life-giving, refining season. I was challenged to live authentically and was gifted with many companions and close friends.
I believe that God crosses our paths with others so that He can grow each of us to become more like Himself. However, it's our responsibility to lean into that calling to be friends. We can remain as pass-in-the-night roommates, chit-chatting neighbors, or casual acquaintances - or, we can purpose to persevere in getting to know one another and appreciating one another's uniquenesses.
C. S. Lewis continues with this:
"In reality, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting - any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are strictly speaking, no chances [...] Christ who said to the disciples, 'Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you,' can truly say to every group of Christian friends, 'You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.' [Friendship] is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others."
In each season of life, there are opportunities to build new friendships and continue growing existing friendships. God has placed you right where you are in a community of potential companions and friends.
Are you allowing God to reveal to you the "beauties of all the others" around you?
Are you choosing to appreciate and connect with others around you in this season of life?
Jesus said, "A new command I give to you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:34-35). It's our calling to love our close friends in order to demonstrate the love of Christ to the world.
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