Friends
Nowadays
it is so easy to keep in touch (almost instantaneously!) with friends all over the
world. Gone perhaps are the “Nights in
white satin / never reaching the end. Letters I’ve written / never meaning to
send. (Moody Blues). Few take the time to put pen to paper anymore. Now it
is finger to keyboard or touch-screen to “like” or to “share” as you dialogue with
friends. And it only takes the press of a button to “unfriend” someone you have
gone off! Old acquaintances from schools and hometowns are being renewed. Like
never before people are catching up the missing years and decades via the
Internet. It is all so easy to reunite with long-lost friends.
I
can relate to Joseph M Scriven sending letters from Canada
I
still get teary whenever I think of the pain I caused my own (now deceased) mother.
I found out many decades later that she spent three days in heart-broken sobs
in her room after she had farewelled me to Canada. Alas! and she never got to
see her grandchildren growing up. Now a grandparent myself I can see how much my
spirit of wanderlust deprived her of that honour and joy! Oh that I could have
written such comforting words to mother as in “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear! What
a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer! O what peace we often
forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything
to God in prayer.”
God
called Abraham and Moses “friends” and God-with-us calls His disciples
“friends.” He never “unfriends” us. Once reconciled to God by Jesus Christ His
friends are His friends forever. Never will He leave us or forsake us. He is
with us always. If I could have only one friend I would make sure that friend
was Jesus.
As
the pre-incarnate Christ He went with Abraham on his travels and even sat down
to a meal with him. He spoke to Moses from a burning bush and met with Him on
the mountain speaking to him face to face. He travelled with them in the pillar
of fire and of cloud.
Friends,
true friends displaying true friendship, are but faint pictures of Jesus and
those for whom He shed His blood. He died for His friends. Nay, He died for His
enemies so that He could make them His friends! Yet He invites all of us to be
His friends. We can confirm or decline His “friend request.” Who is Jesus to
you? Is He just some religious guy you were briefly introduced to as a child at
church, school or Sunday school? Was He just an acquaintance of your parents
perhaps?
With
Jesus as a friend you are in touch with God instantaneously! As a friend He
will not judge your every move. For your comfort as a friend He has sent you
the letters He has written. In them He shows you how much He loves you as a
friend. If you are His friend you have everlasting life and will be raised
bodily on the Last Day to dwell with Him and the rest of His friends forever on
the New Earth.
Yes,
what a friend we have in Jesus!
