How important are the friends we make? Friends can shape our lives to a certain extent. During formative years friends are particularly important as children can so easily be led astray by peer pressure and the wrong kind of friends. When we were houseparents to a group of boys, we had one boy in our family who tended to be heavily influenced by the company he kept. To a certain extent I suspect it can be true of all of us.
You can tell a lot about a person by his or her friends. As the Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes said ‘Tell me what company thou keepst, and I’ll tell thee what thou art.’
This weekend, at our daughter’s engagement party, we caught up with a number of friends. Some we had seen only last week. Others we keep in regular contact with by email and praying for each other but have not seen in about twelve months. Another couple we had not seen for six years. Yet the moment we got together, it felt like the time between last getting together slipped away. We fell back into that friendship, picking up conversations as though no time had passed in the interim.
True friends like these are a blessing that should be cherished. I thank God for friends who have been with me through good times and tough times. Friends who have shown their support in practical, prayerful ways over the years. Friends who know my faults and weaknesses and accept me as I am. What a blessing that is. As George Eliot said, ‘Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.’
When I was a child, my mother wrote in my autograph book ‘True friends are like diamonds, precious and rare, false friends are like autumn leaves found everywhere.’ In Australia at present it is autumn. Leaves litter the ground and crunch underfoot, and I think about the friends who have passed through my life as well as the true friends who remain. Distance cannot interfere with true friendship.
When my mother had had a falling out or argument with her sisters or other family member she often muttered, ‘Family you’re stuck with but you can choose your friends.’
So what makes a good friend? I’d love to hear your thoughts. The Bible reminds us a true friend will tell us the truth even when we may not want to hear the answer, Proverbs 27:6.
How do you go about cultivating a new friend and deepening that friendship? Do you have to work at maintaining friendships? Or does it just happen? Ralph Waldo Emerson says ‘The only way to have a friend is to be one.’
I’m sure we’ve all known those who we thought were our friends but who have stabbed us in the back. Proverbs 19:4 and 19:6 have wise words about those so called friends who are out for what they can gain out of a friendship and desert when times get tough. They might even betray us. David knew the pain of having a friend he trusted, turn against him Psalm 41:9. Jesus also knew that pain. Even as Judas betrayed him with a kiss as false as he himself was, Jesus called him, ‘friend,’ Matthew 26:50.
Among all our friends, there is one who will never betray us, never let us down. ‘A man of many companions may come to ruin but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother,’ Proverbs 18:24 NIV. I hope all of you know Jesus as your best friend as well as your Lord and Savior.
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