Fair Weather Friends?
How many friends do you have?
Some people have a hard time making friends, and some have an even harder time keeping them.
There is a honeymoon period when we meet people that makes it possible to get close enough to plant the seeds of potential friendship. But getting too close or not close enough could kill the friendship before it has a chance to begin.
Pleasant speech multiplies friends, and a gracious tongue multiplies courtesies. Let those who are friendly with you be many, but let your advisers be one in a thousand. When you gain friends, gain them through testing, and do not trust them hastily. For there are friends who are such when it suits them, but they will not stand by you in time of trouble. - Sirach 6:5-8
Last week we had a full day of training and team building in preparation for an upcoming Kairos retreat weekend in November. One of the exercises we did had to do with friendship.
We had to think of four people who have gone the extra mile for us and then write them thank you notes.
It was a wonderful experience because it made me give some serious thought to my choices. At first, I thought, how can I limit it to four.
But after a while, I struggled to come up with as many names as I imagined.
It wasn't that I didn't have many friends. You see the example we were given was the story of the four friends who carried the paralytic friend up to the roof to lower him down through to Jesus, breaking a hole in the roof along the way.
How many people do you know who would do that for you?
The list gets short real fast for me, even if I don't eliminate those who couldn't lift me.
The lesson, I believe, is that we should seriously take stock of the relationships we have, how well we respect them, and how well we treat those we call friends. We certainly don't want to be the ones Sirach is warning us about.
When I took a close look at my list at the end of the exercise, I wondered how many people I call friends would put me on their lists?
I'll let you know if I get any thank you notes.
More to come...
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