Faithful as friends

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful”. Proverbs 27:6 KJV Kings James Version

“Friends mean well, even when they hurt you. But when an enemy puts his arm around your shoulder, watch out”. Proverbs 27:6 GNT Good News Translation 

God has placed friends along my path in life   for which I remain eternally grateful as they have also helped to shape the course of my life. Unlike our family members, we get to choose our friends although several circumstances may have enhanced these. Friendships are built overtime and require effort.

Being faithful as a friend means being a person of our words. It simply means being dependable. It means we can be counted on to be there at all seasons. A faithful friend will always make the other person better, calling out the gifts of God in their lives while being able to see them as they could be. It means to love them enough to listen and believe in them, be their cheer leader helping to drown discouraging voices. Faithfulness also means rejoicing genuinely with their successes and sharing their pain. It is difficult to have a friend without being one.

It also involves being able to tell our friends, with sensitivity the truth although this may sometimes cause strain in the relationship.

It also demands we faithfully keep confidences. Secrets shared with a friend are not to be repeated, no matter how we sometimes craftily do so under the guise of a prayer request! It is a weakness of character to share the secrets of our friends but truth be told, this we sometimes do to put ourselves in a better light. It takes faithfulness to also exercise discretion although not being genuinely concerned about our friends is a recipe for gossip.

Faithfulness means taking the time to know their needs as the relationship evolves and giving them what they need and not what they used to need or what we think they need. How to know? Just ask.

And since they are human and would err from time to time, we must be faithful to forgive them and respect the relationship even when it undergoes a transition by saying as little and as positive about it to others.

 As a child , I  used to cherish cards and my earliest memories was a card given by a  in primary school which erroneously read "God could not be everywhere so he made friends". I cherished it then but looking back today, I would rather it read "God is everywhere and as a reminder, he made friends" as my friends usually remind me of God.

Celebrating friendship

Grace Tom-Lawyer