Monday, November 18, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Friendship
Jesus asked the blind man, “What do you want me to do for you?” He replied, “Please, Lord, let me see.”
Speak to me of friendship, the youth said to the prophet. Kahlil Gibran put words into the mouth of the prophet, and he said:
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “aye.”
And when he is silent your heart does not stop listening to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not, for that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks anything but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: in which only the unprofitable is caught.
Let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
It is his to fill your need but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Being a Lebanese poet living in a strange land (USA), I’m guessing Kahlil Gibran spent much quiet, introverted time alone. I wonder how much time and energy he chose to dedicate to his friends. Charles Dickens, hardly an introvert, refused many social invitations so he could keep on writing. Once he got the fever, his friends were the characters he created. I guess I feel the same way about my own time. Here I am writing at 5:30 am, alone in the dark, about friends and friendship.
Friendliness requires more than just words, as Gibran so beautifully points out. I think what it takes more than anything is time and dedication. If I’m going to deepen a friendship, that begins by making a meeting, hopefully face to face. Either of us can make the first move, but I must not wait for the other. I’d just as soon take on the white pieces, so to speak.
In fact, that intentional gathering of our separate selves in one place reminds us both that we are NOT alone, that we are two pieces of a continent. It’s a paradox but true: when we know our “together,” we know our “alone” better and learn once more the value of both.
I am the light of the world, says the Lord. Whoever follows me will have the light of life.
Pastor Greg in Mahomet talked about overcoming his habit of worry. More important than anything for him was having three or so go-to friends who he knew would drop everything and pray if he asked them to. He also know they would listen to his fears, and not cover them over with some unhelpful band-aid. He knew their umbrellas would cover a multitude of tears.
Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on his law day and night. He is like a tree planted near running wager, whose leaves never fade and always produces fruit.
(Revelation 1, Psalm 1, John 8, Luke 18)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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