Friendship

I have a beautiful friend. I love her.

I am filled with admiration for her. I consider her a true sister of my heart—my friend Zvonka. We are of the same age, my friend and I.

Although dissimilar in many ways, we share a love for God that is vital. Anyway, I have found these dissimilarities only enhance our connection.

Her perspectives contrast to mine, and I see God and the world in fresh, new ways through her. She builds me up, and God uses her in my life to refresh my heart. But I have failed even this beautiful person whom I love. I let the business of my life, the pressures of my “now,” cause me to let her slip from my mind and to the edges of my community.

“Woulda, coulda, shoulda”—the saddest cliched saying because it is so often true. If I had followed through on my fleeting urgings from our God to reach out to her instead of trying to push the responsibility of supporting her onto others, if I had been a better and more constant friend . . . But I was not. My friend is generous and kind.

She loves me well, and in my sad realization and heart repentance, I know that God will continue to fill our friendship with joy, laughter, shared vistas, love, and beautiful days of swimming in cool, refreshing water: our shared pleasure.

If you feel overwhelmed in the “now” of life—your friendships strained, your inner life parched and dry—perhaps you feel like the woman Jesus met beside Jacob’s well. Listen to what He shared with her: “Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never be thirsty; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life’ ” (John 4:13, 14 NASB). God is so good and generous. He says to us, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” (verse 10, NASB). With Him at the center of our lives, our friendship with Him and others will overflow with the fresh, living water of God’s present paradise. Praise be to God!*

* Pearson, Karen. Almost Home Women's Devotional (English Edition) (pp. 99-100). Pacific Press Publishing.