August Advent, part 7: Friendship

Friendship helps us to wait with hope in this liminal space.

Yesterday our family experienced a lot of various feelings about waiting for our visas - disappointment, frustration, despondency, and fatigue topped the list. Yesterday, though, and all those feelings were prefaced by weeks of sharing meals and receiving emails and exchanging hugs and laughter with dozens of amazing people across thousands of miles.

And this makes me think that our yesterdays and todays are framed both with preceding days and future days.

It’s hard to think about “today” as being framed when our only experience is the past and the future is unknown (even if we have plans). Sometimes it’s difficult to get perspective on the current moment or situation when we only know where we’ve been and we don’t know where things will go.

Friendship helps us to Advent well, because friendship reminds us we are not alone. Loneliness stinks. Loneliness leads to harm of self and others. Loneliness can feel claustrophobic. Loneliness can feel hopeless. Loneliness can feel like suffocating or choking or losing at life - again and again and again.

Friendship reminds us that we belong to a story bigger than our despair, despondency or depression.

Friendship reminds us that we matter.

Friendships reminds us that, while we may not know the future, we can enter into the future with others - and sometimes even in and as a community.

A colleague named Blake once told me he understands God loves for us in this way: “Jesus came so that no one ever has to feel alone alone.”

Sometimes circumstances and situations in life can leave us feeling lonely - that’s just the reality. God’s love for us helps us to know we do not have to experience those things alone. And one way knowing and being encountered by God’s love occurs is when we share friendship with others.

Be a friend today - both to others and to yourself.

Be a friend whose love helps frame someone’s difficult circumstance with Hope.

We are so thankful for friends who reach out, who listen, who offer meals and places to stay, who pray for us, who cry with us and who Advent with us.

Lord, help us. Amen.