Importance of Friends
This week my best friend and her husband have been up in Putney, from Plymouth, looking after their son’s flat and his fiancée’s cat while the youngsters go to the Glastonbury Festival. (Hopefully there will not be too much mud this year – two years ago they borrowed his parents’ camper van and had to be towed out by a tractor).
This meant my friends were able to visit me for a change; normally I go and stay with them while Mark is in Macedonia each autumn. I am always grateful for the hospitality and meals but it is uncomplicated and very long-standing friendship that is most important.
Why then, when they are making one of their rare visits to me do I have this panic that the house is not clean and the food not good enough? I never check for dust on her skirting boards, why do I think she will check mine? I could say it is because I wish to honour her but in fact I am just afraid of being found wanting, some sort of fraud, a lousy housekeeper who has been unworthy of the friendship all along, I find it hard to believe her when she says she comes to see me not the house although I know it is true.
Friends are important; everything seems better done in company, particularly scary things like walking home in the dark or going to the dentist. Even watching television can be more enjoyable if you are with someone, someone with whom you can compete when guessing quiz answers or to whom you can make catty remarks about so-called celebrities’ clothes or hairstyles. Chores are easier completed if there are two of you, not only because of the fact that there is less for each individual to do but because the banter and laughter distracts from the task and makes time fly.
True friends are rare and are there for you through thick and thin. In life one travels along for a while with many acquaintances but things happen or people move and the friendship withers, just a few help you survive all the bad bits as well. Currently there is a series of advertisements for one of the high street banks which portrays the establishment as a helpful friend by having actors (ostensibly bank clerks) lining up to form a human walkway, climbing on each others shoulders to reach the client’s window and so forth. It is meant to give that warm fuzzy feeling of friendship and distract you from their real business – prising your money from you. They understand the importance of friends to us all.
Jesus had friends around Him but sometimes they just did not seem able to see the bigger picture and they let Him down. When Jesus walked on water Simon tried it too and sank until the Lord’s outstretched hand brought him success (Matt. 14:22-36). When Jesus told them they could do the same miracles that He did and heal people, they were unsuccessful as they did not really have faith in His giving them the power (Matt.17:14-23). When Jesus told them what was to happen to Him they tried His patience, having been witnesses to His work for three years they still did not appreciate who He really was (Matt.16:21-28). When He asked them to keep watch in the garden as He prayed on the eve of the Crucifixion, they fell asleep (Matt. 26:36-46) and worst of all, when challenged by soldiers and fearing for their lives, they denied even knowing Him (Matt.26:69-75).
Despite all this Jesus still stuck by them, He loved and trusted them and He will do the same for us if we let Him be our friend – He wants to be. All we have to do is accept Him.
