“One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin,
but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
Proverbs 18:24 (NIV)
Someone once said, “your best friend is your unpaid therapist.”
I had a friend for fifty years who was not a professional therapist, but she had a natural gift for helping a person look deep within themselves and benefit from her insight. She was a very selfless, intuitive person who always saw the good in everyone. There were things that Helene and I would never agree on, but we had a long, loyal friendship, regardless of our differences, which is what true friendship really is.
In December of 2021 Helene was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and by February of 2022, she passed away. One year later, I had another friend that passed away prematurely, but Helene was the one I knew the longest, or rather, the one who knew me the longest. Friends are valuable to us because they give us a sense of being known, and everyone needs to be truly known.
Today’s scripture states that there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Many people are blessed with close relationships with their siblings, but others are blessed with friends who are closer to them than any sibling. Whether a sibling or not, a close friend is a gift from God.
When we lose a gift by whatever means, it leaves a vacuum inside, called grief. I believe that Jesus is our truest friend who sticks closer to us than any friend, brother, sister, mother or father. He fills the vacuum of grief within us and blesses us with His friendship.
I recently saw a meme that read “Grief is just unspent love.”
After any kind of loss, we need to find a new outlet, purpose, or direction to reinvest our love and spend it in a new way.
For me, writing has become one way of redirecting my purpose. Through writing, I’m able to pay tribute to friends, honor loved ones who I’ve lost, and encourage the faith of my current friends. It’s been a blessing to build new friendships through writing these meditations.
Some of the people who are receiving the meditations are long time friends, some are new friends, and some are friends of friends, who I have never even met, but they are all gifts to me, and especially to God, who loves each one of them.
Rick Warren, who wrote the timeless devotional book called “The Purpose Driven Life”, said that our number one purpose in life is to know how much God really loves us. Until we get a grasp of how much God loves us, we can never truly love Him, ourself or anyone else. We all suffer during seasons of loss and grief, but when we realize how much we are loved by God, He inspires us not to waste our pain, but to use it in helping others.
We can always discover a new way to reinvest the unspent love that is stored within us. Jesus taught by His own example, that love is meant to be spent, so let’s go shopping for more ways to spend our love.
Lord, lift up all hearts today, and in knowing how much you love us, lead us to new ways of spending the love that is within us. Amen
