This year I turned 50, and my wife posted on her social media about my birthday. I don’t use social media, so she showed me all the people who commented with their greetings. One was a friend from high school. He is the only one of many friends from high school that I have stayed in touch with over the years. But it had been at least five years since he and I chatted. Seeing his post, I texted him and it was great to catch up. We talked about getting lunch and talking further. I really look forward to that.
It was a reminder to me about the fleeting nature of some friendships. During my high school years there were 10-15 people whom I considered to be my closest friends (some from my youth group, some from my high school), and at the time I figured we would be always remain close. But then we went to college, and slowly lost touch. We saw each other over semester breaks and in the summer, but even that faded, as during two of my college summers I was away serving in ministry.
I made new friends at college, some of whom became extremely close, which is to be expected because at college you often live together in the dorm. I have stayed in closer touch with 3-4 of my closest college friends. But like my high school friendships, there are loads of people from college who I haven’t seen or talked with in years.
Since college, I have made still more friends. Particularly, I think about how, by far, the people who are now my closest friends, I met through our Faith Church family. We’ve never lived together, but some of them I have now known for 22 years. During those 22 years, some church friendships have come and gone. That fleeting nature of friendships also reveals itself in church families.
When I look back over the years and I consider the friendships that have faded away, while I do believe that it is okay if friendship levels change, I must face the reality that some friendships faded away because I did not do the work to keep them close. To be fair, in many of those now faded friendships, neither did the other person do the work to reach out to me.
What does it take for friendship to endure? How do we overcome the fleeting nature of some friendships? What does it mean to be a good friend? As we continue our series studying the life of Israel’s great King David, we’re going to continue the story from last week. It was a cliffhanger. David was fleeing Jerusalem because his son Absalom had started a coup. What will happen? Does David have friends he can trust? Does he have friends who are loyal? Read 2 Samuel 2, chapters 16 through 20 ahead of time.
Then join me back here on the blog on Monday, when we’ll begin to examine friendship through the lens of this shocking episode in David’s life.
Engaging Scripture 