One of life’s sweetest gifts: friendship.  The loneliness we feel, isolated within our minds for the extent of our lives, becomes just a little less when you’re with good friends.  With the best and the closest in our lives, we laugh and we cry.  We yell out in rage and collapse in anguish with them.  We celebrate our greatest victories alongside them and are built back up through one another during our lowest defeats.  Friendship is love. Why then are we running from it?

Being known to someone can touch the soul like nothing else can.  Being known can save; it can heal.  Yet even with the life giving power of friendship, we are scared of it. Today, friendship is getting to be surface level.  We know one another’s interests and will text each other from time to time to see a movie or grab a coffee.  We chat about how things are going, what opportunities we’ve been given recently, and what really grinds our gears.  But we stop there.  We say our goodbyes and continue on with our days, further isolating ourselves within.

We must begin to love again and let ourselves be loved.  Our differences are far, far smaller than we believe them to be.  Inside our mind it seems as though we are alone. But outwardly, there are millions of individuals feeling the exact same thing we are.  We have to break the barrier that is preventing us from friendship, from the very thing that can save us.  God has given us each unique personalities and gifts that we are to use for others and for Him.  Let us get out and use them!  Find those that are in need of friendship and befriend them.  Do not let your differences segregate you but rather let your similarities unite each other.  We have to get back to finding out the core of who a person is and journey with that person through thick and thin, displaying Christ’s love always.

However, just as we must love, friendship is allowing ourselves to be loved.  We cannot love but keep our struggles and insecurities behind a wall within our hearts.  Love is a two way street.  Allow those in your life who care for you to penetrate that wall.  Baring one’s soul to another burden-ridden soul is sweeter than any medicine.  It can heal even the deepest of wounds.  We must open our hearts to allow others to open theirs. Colossians 3:12-14 reads, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”

Let’s get back to loving one another shall we?  Let’s get comfortable with sharing who we are inside rather than focusing on an external image.  Let’s thrust ourselves back into love so that we might experience the love Christ first showed us with one another. Extend a hand to the down trodden, to the hurting, to the broken.  Because when we do that, we allow others to reciprocate.  We let others extend a hand to our weary souls. And living together in Christ-centered friendship, free of judgment and shame, sounds like a world we all desperately need right now.

 

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”  Matthew 25: 37-40