Friendships

Friendships

Welcome to Christianity Oasis. This is Friendships from our Sojourn With Luz Leigh Collection. We hope you enjoy this enlightening reading and it helps you on your own be-YOU-tiful Christian walk.

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Sojourn With Luz Leigh

Friendships

Written by Luz Leigh - 20 October 2008

The word "friendship" and its meaning have been on my mind a lot during the past twenty-four hours. I was involved in a discussion last evening about friendship. We were asked how we would define a friend. There were various answers. I threw in that a friend accepts us as we really are, not as the world sees us.

Please let me share a few more words on friends or friendship. Ralph Waldo Emerson said "I didn't find my friends; the good God gave them to me." Isn't that true? There are people in my life at this time that would have never been there had the Lord not placed them there. Some of my friends are well past the promised threescore and ten years; others are young people in their twenties. But each brings something to the mixture that enriches my life.

In the book The Treasure Chest a work that was edited by Charles L. Wallis, I found several quotations or sentiments that I would like to share with you. WHAT IS A FRIEND? ... An English publication offered a prize for the best definition of a friend, and among the thousands of answers received were the following: "One who multiplies joys, divides grief, and whose honesty is inviolable." "One who understands our silence." "A volume of sympathy bound in cloth." "A watch which beats true for all time and never runs down." Here is the definition that won the prize: "A friend is the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out."

"If a man does not make new acquaintances, as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man should keep his friendship in constant repair." Words penned by Samuel Johnson. I certainly find this to be true as I grow older; many of the friends who were a part of my childhood and early adulthood, have moved on, either to other parts of this world or the world beyond.

The Lord has brought friends into my life during the past four years through modern technology ... the Internet. Some are casual friends, but others are people whom I claim as true friends. These are people with whom I can share feelings, dreams, plans, heartaches, joy, and silly thoughts. Some are ones that I feel more comfortable with when discussing serious things; others are ones with whom I can allow the "child inside me to run free." And somewhere in each of us, there is that "child."

Oliver Wendell Holmes tells us ... "Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become." I really need to work on that because sometimes without thinking how my words will affect a friend, I say things that offend, upset or hurt that person. Then I have to build the bridge again and make amends.

"People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges." Friendships develop when we cross the bridge and reach out to someone.

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