I caught up with Jamie yesterday. We’ve known each other for fifteen years and connect over like minded passions for Jesus, laughter and the occasional good whisky. I’d not seen him in almost a year but within minutes we picked up where we left off. Twenty four hours later I’m still smiling at the jokes and stories shared. There’s something spectacularly good about friends.
Have you ever wondered what makes friendship so wonderful?
The power of friendship is atomic.
We were created to connect, crafted for community, designed with unity in mind. When God creates the cosmos and its custodians, eight times he declares that ‘It is good.’ The first thing that he finds to be ‘not good,’ is for the first human to be alone.
Mother Teresa described loneliness as the leprosy of the West. In the UK over the last couple of years the number of lonely people has increased from 1 in 20 to 1 in 14. Covid-19 has not been the only epidemic of our times. And loneliness is deadly.
Scientific studies consistently show that you can be incredibly unhealthy in terms of diet and fitness, and yet, if you have good friends, you will live longer than someone who keeps themselves in shape, but lives in isolation. It is better to eat kebabs with friends than salad on your own.
Friendship is the antidote to loneliness. We were made for it. And it is worth celebrating.
My son’s day is made by the new friend he makes in the playground. We remember fondly our first day at work, not because of the new laptop we were given, but the relational connections we began to form. My perfect day ends round a fire with a glass of something sweet, bursting with laughter, surrounded by people I love. We are aching to know and be known. Friendship is medicine to the soul. It is so good.
Today, my challenge to you is to celebrate your friends. Drop them a note of encouragement, write them an old fashioned letter. Make a Tiktok (I’m still not sure what one of those is). Send a fax. Commission a carrier pigeon. If you have no plans for the evening, light the firepit and celebrate one another. Today is International Friendship Day. It’s the perfect reminder that we are made in the image of the relational God, that we were made for one another and when we love each other we glorify him.
But it is also International Friendship Day. One of the important emphases of the day is that we celebrate our connection not just to those who are like us, but those with whom we share significant differences. Birds of a feather do flock together, but the invitation to ‘love your neighbour’ in today’s world is to make occasional steps outside our comfort zones into friendships that may take more initial work, but in which there is a depth and richness in diversity and difference.
As we hear the jangling of mugs at the end of the church service and smell the coffee being poured, we make small decisions who we will engage with over the next few minutes. My natural inclination is to gravitate towards the men my own age who like football. Sometimes that is the easy and right thing to do. But my challenge is to occasionally sometimes summon the courage to walk across the room to connect with someone you have less in common with and begin to build a friendship.
There’s no hierarchy in friendship. We all get to play. All of us have the divine spark in us to get to know and be known by a friend. Like many things in our world, we under-appreciate its worth and under-invest in its riches. Today I am unapologetically using the excuse of International Friendship Day to celebrate those who mean the most to me and giving thanks to God for my friends – those who I have a great deal in common with, and those of different ages, backgrounds, stories and worldviews.
Thank you God for friendship. Happy International Friendship Day.
