Amistad

TFF:True Friends Forever. Please raise your hand if you have ever written those three letters on a scrappy piece of paper and passed it to your best friend (at least for the day) back in the days of gradeschool. I think I finally threw out all my love notes and hate mail from those elementary days before I made the move to Bolivia.

Today was El Dia de Amistad in Bolivia, Friendship Day. It reminds me a lot of Valentine's Day with similar cartoonish cards handed out and flowers marketed everywhere. For the past two weeks, we've had fun at the home with our "amigas secretas", passing notes, gifts, and trying to figure out who our illusive buddy could be. The last two Sunday messages have sprung from this dearly loved holiday as well. It was the first sermon that really moved me, wringing my heart and causing me to feel for the first time in months.

Someone I love and care for hurt me so badly and my reaction was to withhold my friendship from him. It began as a mechanism to protect myself and evolved into a prideful stand against someone who had rejected me. Beaten and betrayed, I became a person I didn't recognize. Determination to be distant and aloof was destroying my joy and robbing me of cheer.

As I sat in the service last week, all the defenses I had put in place crumbled to pieces. Jesus called Judas "friend" even as the betrayer planted his lying lips on his cheekbone. Friendship is not about what the other person does or does not do. To be a friend is show yourself a friend. While these truths seeped into me, I resolved to do as much as it depended on me to restore a cherished relationship.

"Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act." Proverbs 3:27. Are you withholding your friendship from someone? Are you trying to punish another by being stand offish and cold? Maybe they don't deserve it, maybe they do, but YOU deserve the peace and relief that comes from healing a rift when it is in your power to do so.

God provided sweet companions for me as I poked my way through the fog of a lost friendship. I recognize them as being there and give thanks for their presence in a time when I was so removed and unmoved by the goodness of God and life. Countless souls walk the trail with us and many veer to another route, but the One who sticks closer than a brother is the most constant companion of all.