“Friendships’ Tricky Places”

Scripture

“My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no-one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”(John 15:12-15 NIVUK) 

“Friendships’ Tricky Places”

Friendship can place us in tricky and sticky places. Over my decades offering spiritual friendship too often I have been invited into times of failure and embarrassment as friends have misused money, power, or sex.  But friendship isn’t just for happy times; it’s for the dark times where truth spoken in love is crucial.  

“I didn’t have any rocks to throw, I just grieved the lost years of duplicity that you had imprisoned yourself with”. I said this recently to a respected friend of long standing with whom I had lost touch after his self-defined moral failure caused him to lose his position of leadership. It might have been ten years since we had been together but I thought of him often at our long distanced locations. 

I have expressed the same sentiments in far too many occasions with friends whose secrets have been disclosed – the failure had been ongoing but discovery was sudden. But, as in the case of my recent conversation, restoration and reconciliation to God, family, and others who have been deceived or damaged also happens often. It is a wonderful demonstration of the power of truth graced with forgiveness.  

I’ve seen men and women left outside the welcoming community of faith when their restoration from their obvious failure has made them stronger and more trustworthy to lead than previously. They built truth into their lives and found the love of God is greatest in the darkest places. 

Each person is different and authentic restoration is often not found but we need reminding that my failures and yours, properly forgiven and healed, and relationships restored, can create a kinder more trustworthy leader and friend. 

A Prayer for Today

Beauty of friendship grow between us.
Friendship without guile, without malice, without striving.
Goodness of friendship grow between us. Friendship with light, with wings, with soul sharing.
Be in the eye of each friend of my journey to bless and teach each one.
The eye of the Father be upon us. The eye of the Son be upon us.
The eye of the Spirit be upon us. The eye of the Friendly Three be upon us forever