Good morning…
At 3:18 am yesterday, I completed my early morning hours of writing with God and pushed “send” on our message Fearing Our Best Friend? Then I climbed back in bed and drifted back to sleep. I woke at 6:53 am, returned a text to my daughter, made a pot of coffee, and sat down to re-read our blog post for the day. Our challenging morning message ended with a haunting question: “In what ways can you relate to this ambivalent dilemma of being afraid of God, our Best Friend?”
Sitting with my own thoughts for a few more fertile minutes, I then went back to my inbox and opened up Henri Nouwen’s devotional for the day, a devotional which came in at 5:01 am. It is as if the Spirit of God was continuing our dynamic dialogue, friend-to-Friend.
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DAILY MEDITATION | OCTOBER 22, 2021 – Be a Real Friend by Henri Nouwen
True friendships are lasting because true love is eternal. A friendship in which heart speaks to heart is a gift from God, and no gift that comes from God is temporary or occasional. All that comes from God participates in God’s eternal life. Love between people, when given by God, is stronger than death. In this sense, true friendships continue beyond the boundary of death. When you have loved deeply that love can grow even stronger after the death of the person you love. This is the core message of Jesus.
When Jesus died, the disciples’ friendship with him did not diminish. On the contrary, it grew. This is what the sending of the Spirit was all about. The Spirit of Jesus made Jesus’ friendship with his disciples everlasting, stronger, and more intimate than before his death. That is what Paul experienced when he said, “It is no longer I, but Christ living in me” (Galatians 2:20).
You have to trust that every true friendship has no end, that a communion of saints exists among all those, living and dead, who have truly loved God and one another. You know from experience how real this is. Those you have loved deeply and who have died live on in you, not just as memories but as real presences.
Dare to love and be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as to those whom God has given you to love.
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“‘Tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch,” is a line that returns to mind from a poem in one of our recent blog posts, To Love Is Risky. Right now, it seems to me, God is teaching a timeless truth: “When death touches true love, enduring friendship blossoms into eternity.”
Love between people, true friendship gifted by our Best Friend, continues beyond the boundary of death. Our friendship with the wounded Christ did not diminish on the cross. On the contrary, Christ’s eternal life, Christ’s eternal love has been released into our very being. Just like Paul, we can honestly say, “It is no longer I, but Christ living in me” (Galatians 2:20). Our Best Friend and all true friends live on – in, through, and among us – both now and forevermore.
The Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, now fills our lungs, making our friendship with Jesus everlasting, stronger, and more intimate than before his death. In a similar way, we are invited to trust that every true friendship we have experienced on earth will vibrantly live on, increasing in power forever. We who have pushed through our innate fear of intimacy have risked deeply loving God and authentically loving each other. Moment by moment, we are intimately embraced by a mysterious communion of saints, eternally bonded with spiritual friends, both living and dead.
What an amazing truth is being richly revealed to us this ordinary morning.
…Sue…
