Wednesday June 1, 2011

Friends are very important. Friends are very important to me. As I have gotten older the priority I have put on spending time with my friends has risen on my time frame. I have found time in my day to pull away from my work and seek a breakfast or a lunch with friends that I want to stay in touch with. I am not perfect in this adventure as I do sometimes put tasks above my friends, but I am a work in progress. I love getting together with my friends and eating breakfast at Butterfields to catch up on what haas been taking place in their lives. It is a reciprocal arrangement where sometimes I will call them to make arrangements and sometimes it is the reverse. I covet those times and find that I need my friends for support and for a listening ear and am sure the opposite is true.

When you think of a best friend what comes to mind? For me it was my late wife as she and I had that common bond of connection and I truly saw her as my best friend. Unfortunately she died almost 3 years ago this month and I lost my best friend. I have friends who have also lost their best friend, and it hurts deeply at the time and continues to cause pain for months afterward.

As I was reading in Job this morning I came across something that I would love to hear from the Lord. “After God had finished addressing Job, he turned to Eliphaz the Temanite and said, “I’ve had it with you and your two friends. I’m fed up! You haven’t been honest either with me or about me—not the way my friend Job has.” (Job 42:7). God called Job “My friend.”. What a message to hear that the Lord would call us His friend. For Job, he needed to get honest with God and seek Him with all his heart. He also needed to seek forgiveness for his wrong perceptions of God and his lack of knowledge of the Creator.

The real question for me and for you is whether or not the Lord would call us His friend. I would hope so, but I wonder if there are things in my life that need to be cut out and perceptions of God that need to be changed as in the case of Job. On this journey, finding God as our friend and him calling us His friend is the most important relationship that we could pursue.