Friendship

I don’t know much, but I do know this: Legos were not designed to be alone. Legos were designed to be combined with other Lego blocks to create almost anything your imagination can come up with. Lone Legos, in my experience have only one purpose—to test your ability to control your tongue when you step on them in your bare feet! Every parent reading this knows what I am talking about!

I have been learning that people are like Legos. God did not design us to be alone. I believe there is good reason to take time to be alone, to separate ourselves so that we can be with God in solitude. There is great blessing to be found in that discipline. Yet God designed us to work best with other people and in community. After He formed Adam in the Garden God said, it is not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18).Think about that. Adam was in the Garden of Eden before there was any sin in the world. Nothing stood in the way of his relationship with God. He had everything he needed. But even with God walking with Him in the cool of the day, God still proclaims that in some sense Adam was in fact alone and that was not good.

I have talked before about the centrality of family in our God-given identity as men and women here. While family is wired deep into our identity, there’s a reason Proverbs 17:17 (ESV) says A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. In the next chapter we find another interesting verse, Proverbs 18:24 (NIV) One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Watching my girls, I see what Solomon was getting at. My daughters’ love and care for each other is only matched by their passion for fighting with one another! We need friends in addition to our family. We’ve been built that way. That’s what these and other passages in the Bible teach such as,

Proverbs 27:6 (NIV) Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.

Proverbs 27:9 (NIV) Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice.

Proverbs 27:10 (NIV) Do not forsake your friend or a friend of your family, and do not go to your relative’s house when disaster strikes you—better a neighbor nearby than a relative far away.

I guess my question for today is do we have friends like this, who loves at all times and sticks closer than a brother?

Our friend count on Facebook does not provide the answer to that question. Facebook and other social media sites are powerful tools that can be used to grow and cultivate friendships with people when used correctly. But like any tool, it can be misused and even abused. I currently have 571 “friends” on Facebook, and while I know who each of those people are, most of those “friends” and I are not in any kind of regular contact.

Most of us have no shortage of acquaintances—classmates, co-workers, church members, neighbors—people whom we are friendly with, that we are willing to talk to and share little bit with down at the water cooler, people we are glad to see and sad when they don’t show up. But these are not the kinds of friends Scripture is encouraging us to have and cultivate in the above verses. Do we have friends who love at all times and stick closer than a brother? If we don’t have and cultivate deeper friendships, we can be very lonely, even with many acquaintances.

Adversity is one of the ways we come to see how we are doing in this area. When hard times come, who is constantly reaching out to you? Who do you think of reaching out to when you are in trouble? Who are the people you would want to spend time with on your last day on this earth? Who are the people you willing drop the mask for, letting them see your hurt and pain? Who are the people who have permission to say hard things to you? Those are questions that reveal who our deepest friends are.

Personally, I have found that many deep friendships I have been blessed with have been occasional—they were given by God for a certain place or for a season. Although very real and deep while I was at a certain place, part of a particular community, or for time of life, when I left that place, that community, or that season (or when they did) the friendship faded. Very few friendships, I have been learning, transcend time and place. Those friendships are rare blessings. I don’t mean to diminish those occasional friendships in saying that, but rather to make the point that we often need to continue the work and effort to be building deep friendships throughout our life.

I hope you have friends like that. Take the time and make the effort to build and cultivate them. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.