Friends are good, they either make you or mar you. If you are blessed to have good ones who stick by you through thick and thin, through valleys and hill, through dark times and bright times, then you are truly blessed.
We all have friends, some we have known from childhood and some we met later in life. Some are good and some are not so good and some we have not even physically met (we can’t thank social media enough for that). We hardly know anything about the online friends, yet they are still our friends, though some are just in the numbers, we know virtually nothing about them and they know nothing about us. What a form of friendship!
Recently in the news in the UK, a teenager’s life was saved online while playing an online game with his online friend whom he had never met in real life because the other friend lives miles away in the US. So they are miles away but closer together in need. It happened that while they were both playing an online game, the friend in the US discovered that his friend in the UK was no longer responding and she decided to put a call through and discovered that the friend in the UK could hardly breathe nor talk. The friend in the US decided to do the needful by putting a call across to the UK emergency line and gave the details of his friends to the emergency team. Eventually, the UK teenager’s life was saved simply by a friend he had never met in real life.
“friendship is not in how long we have known each other but who was there when needed”
Similarly is the story of a man in the Bible (Luke 5) whom some men helped to get to where he was healed. We were told in the Bible that some men (not necessarily his friends) brought the man in a bed which had palsy, but they couldn’t get in to where Jesus was. Yet they did not give up, as they ended up carrying him up the roof top and let him down through the tiling with his couch to where Jesus was. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man “thy sins are forgiven thee” and the man was healed.
It was not recorded anywhere in the story that the men were his friends, neither were they bothered about themselves. They might have seen the man lying there all by himself with no one to help him and they knew that Jesus was in town that could heal him and they decided to carry him, not minding the pressure of carrying him about.
They gave their all and carried him all the way. They were not discouraged with the crowd. In fact, that made them more determined to get him to Jesus at all cost. They were friends in need and in deed. It was possible for them to jump in after dropping the man off to just to show off, so they too can be praised for their efforts, but they didn’t do that, as they just went their way.
I have always believed that “friendship is not in how long we have known each other but who was there when needed” you might be a friend and lives miles apart from each other and when there is need for help you couldn’t reach out to each other, but someone closer at that time rendered the help, then that is a friend. “A friend in need is a friend in deed”.
But I know a friend that is closer than any other friends, the friend who cannot be stopped by distance, circumstances or predicaments. Nothing can stop him from being your friend. Even when there is so much issue going on in your life he won’t desert you like some do.
However, the man at the beautiful gate (Act 3) who was crippled had another type of friends in his life. They carried him every day for many years to the same spot at the entrance of the beautiful gate, and never for once thought of carrying him into the gate where the temple was, maybe he would have long been healed before Peter finally met him and got his healing.
Friends are good, they either make you or mar you. If you are blessed to have good ones who stick by you through thick and thin, through valleys and hills, through dark times and bright times, then you are truly blessed. I have been blessed to have friends like that in my life, but I discovered that such friends are seasonal. They come your way, do amazing things, and before you know it, here comes the distance and you are miles apart, and it doesn’t feel real anymore.
But I know a friend that is closer than any other friends, the friend who cannot be stopped by distance, circumstances or predicaments. Nothing can stop him from being your friend. Even when there is so much issue going on in your life he won’t desert you like some do. He won’t tell you to deal with it, he will never leave you on a dark road alone. He will journey with you, he even gave his life as a ransom for yours. Jesus is the only true and genuine friend anyone can ever have. Try Him out! He is a friend in need and in deed.
“You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:14-15).
