Week 7 | Monday

Read: Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

Some of the most popular shows from the past 30 years centered around friendships. While they don’t necessarily stand the test of time, they do live on in reruns and streaming services because the central component of these shows, the very thing that drew us in, is friendship. Think about Friends, Seinfeld, and Big Bang Theory. Obviously, those shows do not present models for Christian living. Still, they capture the value of having a few close friends with whom you can be unapologetically yourself. Those relationships stand through many ups and downs, no matter how big or small.

Those kinds of friendships don’t just happen. While they may be initiated by some unintentional circumstance, they don’t deepen or stand the duration without putting in the work. Aside from my wife, I have had two best friends in my life. One was in elementary school. His name is Kenneth. The other, David, was my best friend in high school. My friendship with the two did not overlap, and neither lasted into adulthood. Why? I didn’t put in the work. To his credit, David did all the way through college. Thanks to his effort, we stayed in touch until we were each married with kids. Then, we just drifted. Nothing terrible or dramatic happened. We just drifted.

Since then, God has blessed me with many other friends, though none fit the traditional mold of “best friend.” The friendships I have now are more like my friendships in college. They changed semester by semester, never got very deep, and were usually rooted in some shared experience – often a class we had together. This was good. I didn’t mind it at all…until I looked back several years later and realized this had become the pattern of friendship for my entire adult life. I didn’t have a Jerry and George, Chandler and Joey, Sheldon and Leonard kind of friendship and hadn’t for a long time. That made me realize a simple truth: life is better together.

God made us in His image, and He is, in His very nature, relational. God exists as three persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. While we each exist as a single person, the wiring for connection in God also exists in us. This is part of why Jesus didn’t conduct his earthly ministry alone. He had many followers but spent most of his time with a motley crew (not to be confused with Motley Crue) of 12 very different men. He also poured extra time, teaching, and training into three of those 12.

Reflect on your relationships and name the five people with whom you are closest. What is the nature of those relationships? How open can you be with them (and how open are you)? In what ways do you contribute positively to their lives? How do they bless yours?