Thoughts on friendship...

I’ve been thinking about friendships a lot lately. I’ve been thinking about the ups and downs and about how seasonal friendships can be. If it were up to be I’d hold on tight to all of my wonderful friends and never let them go. Life just doesn’t work like that though. Some friends may be a permanent fixture in our life and some may just be there for a season.

This past week I was up on the roof of my building. It’s the one place here where I feel free to scream, cry, dance, sing and just converse with God. I was talking to God about friendships in my life. I was lamenting the seasonal ones and asking God how to handle the ins and outs in life. The only answer I got was, “Do you trust me Miranda? Do you trust ME to meet all of your needs?”

I went back to my room a little down in the dumps, went to bed, got up and went to class and then I started to study the book of Jeremiah. Wow! Jeremiah had no friends, his family turned against him, and practically everyone hated him! God told him to not take a wife and to not have children. Jeremiah was the definition of alone… if you are looking to worldly standards. I started to feel really sorry for Jeremiah and just sat with my Bible, tears streaming down my face uncontrollably. Would God one day give me a call like Jeremiah’s? What if God asked me to truly be alone? What if God asked me to go to a place where people hated the gospel and they hated me? What if I had to completely give up my earthly friendships and only have a relationship with the LORD? Hm… pretty heavy stuff. After feeling pretty sorry for myself and for Jeremiah I went back to my studies.

This is when I saw something amazing. Jeremiah 17:5 says, “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD,” but then in Jeremiah 17:7 it says, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD; whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes…” When I read these passages God gave my heart a revelation. I was looking at everything all wrong. I was feeling sorry for myself for not having a person that I could depend on being a constant, no matter what. Then I realized, a relationship with God is better than thousands of constant relationships. Trusting in God is better than a husband or a best friend. I AM BLESSED! It’s not that God may not give me a husband, or friends that will last for the rest of my life, but God was reminding me that no matter what happens I am simply blessed to have a constant relationship with him. The creator of the universe dwells in my heart and talks to me. He loves me and knows me intimately! It doesn’t get any better than that!