The Perfect Friendship

Do you ever get so caught up in life that when you stop to take a look at where you are, you realize that you're more than a few steps behind in keeping up with your friendships? I know that sometimes I have gotten so lost in the busy aspects of day to day life and myself that I have lost track of strong friendships. Sometimes, friendships are able to bounce back from this. All it takes sometimes is the realization that you're losing what you once had in order to hold onto it tightly again. In other cases, it means losing good friends. I know that there have been a few times where I watched friendships slip away, but it seemed like it was too late to grab ahold of them again. There are a few of these friendships that I look back on and wonder if I would have done something differently, if we would still be close today.

If only it were as easy as clicking "Confirm"...

I hate that feeling - that feeling of losing the friendship of a person with whom I shared almost everything, whom I looked to for advice, with whom I shared countless laughs and tears. It is an awful feeling, to feel that slipping away and not knowing what to do.


So, it got me thinking. If my insides twist and turn and boil and churn from losing a human friendship, which is based on two imperfect people trying to make an imperfect friendship stand the test of time, then why don't I feel sick to my stomach when I find myself drifting away from God's perfect friendship? Furthermore, how does God feel when we start to slip away from His friendship? He doesn't just sit back and watch His friendships slip away until they're gone. Instead, He does everything He can - without interfering with our free will - to show each one of us how much He loves us and how much our friendship means to Him. So why don't I get a visceral reaction from even slightly slipping away from His love? We should be spiritually vomiting all over the floor when we even get a little too caught up in ourselves and forget to keep up with His unconditional friendship.

If only we could all be this at peace when we talk with Jesus!

We've been talking a lot in our Bible study recently about the Lenten Mass readings and how they consistently show that God meets us where we are. I'm not just talking in the sense of lowering Himself to taking on a human nature, but even more of seeking us out where we will be able to hear Him and understand Him the best. We encountered that with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:5-42) and we will read it again in the blind man's life changing encounter with Christ this coming Sunday (John 9:1-41). In both cases, Jesus came to meet these broken people exactly where they were. These two were both at a dark place in life - rock bottom, in a sense - but still Christ went there with them to bring them out of the darkness into light. Both the woman and the blind man were cured of their spiritual blindness - a blindness to God's infinite love and friendship that they had been carrying their whole lives! They encountered Christ not only in the flesh, but deep within their hearts - and they had this conversion not because they were out seeking God, but because God came to them, seeking to deepen that friendship with each of them. This is exactly what He does with each of us. The placement of these readings in the Lenten season is not by accident. Lent is not just about penance, sacrifice, and preparation, but it's about remembering or rediscovering Christ as a friend. I hope that I can use the rest of this Lent to try to put my friendship with God first in my life and open my eyes to Christ when he comes to meet me, wherever I am.

Edit: Right after I clicked to publish this post, I went over to read the latest post on the Our Father at Conversion Diary... and it is so fitting! Go check it out!

"I no longer call you servants... Instead, I have called you friends." (John 15:15)