it's one thing to have friends and quite another to have friends ready to go to prayer for you, to get mad at God for you, to spend long nights over tea listening to you recount your sadness or plan a picnic or drag you to kick around the soccer ball if only to taste some normalcy for a bit.
i heard a preacher once say making friends is like planting seeds which not only sprout beautiful flowers but that plant deep roots...able to support you in times of drought when you never even knew the roots were there.
ok...all right...that preacher was me and that was a thought i had when preparing a sermon on Ecclesiastes 4....
7 Again I saw something meaningless under the sun:
8 There was a man all alone;
he had neither son nor brother.
There was no end to his toil,
yet his eyes were not content with his wealth.
"For whom am I toiling," he asked,
"and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?"
This too is meaningless—a miserable business!
9 Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work:
10 If one falls down, his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!
it's funny b/c it was another section of Ecclesiastes that originally helped me get through these past few weeks....I remember telling Booyeon that if there was a "time to mourn" then there must consequently be a "time to rejoice"....and that gave me hope...
now my reflection is on my friends---the deep wellspring of joy you have all been for me and Boo. whether it was relentlessly calling us, dropping us a considerate email, sending flowers, stopping by or entertaining us---the measure of comfort you brought is difficult to measure and not worth it to even try.
it's enough to know we have been helped up by our friends when we fell hardest...
