What Is A Friend?

What Is A Friend? (Audio)

My bride and I have chatted recently how our busy lives make it difficult to enjoy being around friends. We make time for the family, but it’s often easier to crash in the evening and recoup on Saturday than to carve out time for friends. Maybe it’ll be different after retirement. Who knows.

My bride has her group of friends from across the years. I know most of them. Some are from her school days, other from places we’ve lived or places she’s worked… I, too, have friends across the nation that I strive to stay in contact with. Email, text, social media, occasional phone call, you know the next best thing one step removed from snail mail. Friends that my bride may, or may not, have met. My bride knows Mickey in Texas, but has only chatted with Frank in Tenessee by phone.

A special note about friends: My bride is really my best friend. We are stronger together than apart. We are best for each other when we are honest and true with each other. We do not fight, but we know how to have intense conversations. We trust each other, even when “my” way is not the way we do something. We can simply hang out with each other and never feel that we must converse. Just being with my bride is something I enjoy. 

The best friendship is often that connection between equals. I wonder how rich and famous people have true friends?

The language of friendship is not words but meanings. ~Henry David Thoreau Click To Tweet

When I’m with my siblings it’s as if no time has passed since our last gathering and we pick up where we left off. We seldom connect by any other way than quick text or email, and it seems to be just enough to keep us in the loop. I have several cousins that I love to be around, but time, distance and busy schedule keep us from seldom meeting.

But with my friends… Well, a good face-to-face visit is necessary. Every so often. I’ve seen Mickey several times over the past year, and it’s about time to pay Frank a good solid visit.

Every so often I take the time to dial, live and in person (!), into my pastors live stream. Our friendship goes back long ways, but I must confess I remember his dad worked at the same place with my dad long before he and I met. That was in the 50’s. I met Brett about 1988 or 1989 when we visited his church. Whoa! About 30 years ago! That’s aging myself!

He has been a wise listening ear, a good advisor, a constant friend, and his preaching today is still the voice I remember from back then. I can sit and listen to him and imagine myself enjoying his words as if we turned the clock back 3 decades. We don’t talk much and if I travel that way I try to connect, although I didn’t have time my past two visits. But I always know and value his friendship. Our connection is solid.

What is a friend?

Take a moment and try to put it into words. When I struggle with words, a dictionary is often my backup. So, the Cambridge Dictionary says,

“a person you know well and like a lot, but who is usually not a member of your family:”

Hunh… You can be friends with a family member, but sometimes, no, oft times, well, maybe all the time, “Blood is thicker than water” – you have no choice but to accept them as “the” family even if you are not friendly with them, or them with you. The family often does for each other out of an obligation. Friends do it for a different reason.

A friend loves at all times, And a brother is born for adversity. (Proverbs 17:17 NKJV)

On the other hand, a friend is someone who will disturb your peace at the most inopportune time and you do not mind it one iota. Jesus speaks a parable of this.

And He said to them, “Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within and say, ‘Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you’? I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs. (Luke 11:5-8 NKJV)

In this parable, it seems the friend is sleeping over the trap door that opens below. His children will have to awaken and moved out of the way in order to open the door. A true friend may feel the stress of the moment, but will rise to the challenge. Why? That’s what true friends do.

Yes. There is such a thing as a true friend and one who is only there for the fun and frivolity. A true friend steps into the gap between danger and safety. All other “friends” abandon you when the going is tough and even dangerous.

Friends can speak truth into a situation, and because they are your friend you will be more apt to pay attention to them than when family or authority speaks the same words.

Open rebuke is better Than love carefully concealed. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. (Proverbs 27:5-6 NKJV)

Here’s my thought about friendship. It’s a two-way street. You cannot always be the recipient. You must also be the giver. To be a friend, you have to give and receive. Reciprocating engines understand this in a mechanical sense, but in a friendship realm, you have to learn this. So… Let’s learn a truth.

A man who has friends must himself be friendly, But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. (Proverbs 18:24 NKJV)

Friendship is desperately needed for all the reasons listed previously. But the truth about friendship? I am a better person because of true and faithful friends. I only hope that this feeling is mutual and reciprocated.

As iron sharpens iron, So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. (Proverbs 27:17 NKJV)

Why? Maybe this is a quotable moment?