About Friends

Over at Doug's blog (that's Dugalug around here), he's got an excellent post on friendship. Here are some of the high points for me:

My theory is that my best friends are not the ones that are there all of the time, but the ones that are there when I need them most.

True friends are concerned with giving, not taking. You don't keep tallies any longer because it doesn't matter. You can be separated from true friends for months, years even, get together and it will seem like time has just stood still. True friends scratch deeper than the surface when they ask how you are doing because they really want to know and help if they can. True friends don't expect much, but are just as happy to be around you as you are around them.

God's tally sheet is simple: we owe Him everything, and we deserve judgment.

In prayer time, I am trying to make an effort to verbalize my feelings on issues in my life, rather than always asking and thanking God for His hand in my life. I do this with my best friends, why wouldn't I do this with God?

The reality is that all friendships are somewhat lopsided, but that shouldn't matter one bit. We can never repay God for His love, mercy, and grace shown to us through Jesus, yet God is our friend, and He has no tally sheet to those cleansed in the Blood of Jesus.

To me, these are gems, and they express more eloquently than I could what true friendship is and what it means. Thanks for a great post over there, Doug. Keep it up.

Oh, and just for the record, even though I was a friend of Doug's in college, his paragraph:

In college, I had a friend who would call me, and the conversation was exactly the same every time. It would go something like: 'Hello Doug?... How are you doing?... That's great! Listen, I was wondering if I could get you to do __________ for me?!'.

although I'm sure it sounds like me, it wasn't about me. I probably wasn't far from it, though.

Anyway, college was a rough and tumultuous (although fun, too) period of my life, and Doug stuck with me as only a true friend could and would during my personal heaven and hell tour back then. So when he speaks on friendship, I listen, and I think it would be great if anyone reading this clicked on over to his blog to read the whole piece. It's flat good.

Friendship