phílos – a friend; someone dearly loved (prized) in a personal, intimate way; a trusted confidant, held dear in a close bond of personal affection.
it is interesting to me to see how friendship has changed over the years. maybe it hasn’t really changed much, maybe it is simply what i see now. but what i see is disheartening.
i see a culture driven by what we want for ourselves. a culture that lives for self pleasure instead of self-sacrifice. clearly self-sacrifice doesn’t sound pleasant or fun or enjoyable. but i encourage you to look at the friendships that mean the most to you…i bet that at one point or another, there was a great deal of sacrifice involved.
our idea of friendship has changed to involve simply knowing what facebook tells us is going on or what their instagram and twitter feed show. we spend so much time on silly social media instead of knowing what is going on other people’s lives.
but then sometimes we get so entangled in other’s lives that we don’t know how to live our own. ok maybe you haven’t…that was my fight for sure. maybe you are so disengaged you don’t know anyone’s life. but whatever it is that we are doing in either extreme isn’t really friendship. it’s just weird.
friendship involves sacrifice and love and boundaries. it involves listening and talking. it involves time and experience. it involves celebrating and mourning. it involves trust.
how have we gotten so far away from this beautiful institution. this institution that helps us survive life.
what if we didn’t make it about all the silly things? what if we didn’t walk away when it got hard? what if we truly laid down our life for those God gave us? what if we just loved people for the sake of loving people and not because they know Jesus or they don’t or serve Him well or don’t? what if we loved ourselves the way God loved us so we could have the capacity to love others in a supernatural way?
what if?