What, a friend?

Have North American Christians forgotten what friendship really is?

A real friend is one that is intertwined and intermingled in your world. One who knows about you even when you are not even around each other. One who can read you when you are totally silent. One who runs in to aid you when the rest run out in fear. One who carries you when you can no longer carry yourself. One who does not keep count of wrongs. One who does not mind serving you when you don’t even deserve to be associated with. One who does not record debts, and who only ask to share in successes. That is a real friend.

Unfortunately today, we don’t strive for that we just look to connect with people and then call those connections friendships. Sure we are connected, but we connect at the Twitter and facebook level – one or two lines of pithy comments. We don’t really connect where we know people. Making this condition worse is the fact that even with those surface “friendships” as the norm, we are still more likely to know more about our online “friends” via short comments then we are our next door neighbors. We chat online, we surf the web, we goggle for info, but we never walk next door. We don’t want to KNOW people we want to KNOW ABOUT people. Sad, but true.

Please read the whole article to see how this impoverished view of friendship affects our relationships with Jesus.