Today, thanks to facebook, we can easily "count" our friends- sometimes well into the hundreds! We can post our ideas, news in our lives, or even our feelings and be ensured that someone, yes at least one of our friends will reply.
Nathanaël and I have had many different experiences of friendship over the past few years, and one of the conclusions we have made is that friendship takes work! Alas, gone are the days of "wan't to play school?" and "come see my new toy truck!". In the adult world it seems to be a little harder to make friends, and to maintain friendships.
In fact friendship in the Bible is seen as a serious thing! Proverbs 17:17 A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity. And the verse that tops all "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends" John 15:14. This is no small thing! Jesus is the ultimate example of friendship, and love, since he lays down his life for us.
One conclusion we often come to is that in order to live out this kind of friendship we may have to sacrifice breadth (ie. not try and maintain friendships with 100 people!) and go for depth (focus on a few). The moments in our lives when we've been blessed to connect with good friends has been well worth the effort.
One set of friends that we admire is our friends up in Kirkland Lake. When Graham and Melodie were called to serve up North, Dan and Julianne were there behind them saying us too! And now up there they have a sweet little community where they are making a difference together. These families remind us of David and Jonathan's relationship, described in the Bible. In fact in several places in the the book of 1 Samuel, Jonathan is described as loving David as himself. "And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself" (1 Samuel 18:3).
This is the daily challenge for us: to keep laying down our lives.
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