Sometimes I think about what I have done in life. I haven’t really accomplished much - but this I have done: I have made friends.
My friends are my treasures. I am really grateful for them. I know that with a friend I am just me: i don’t have to try to be smarter or more competent than I am, or have things figured out. I know that they like me. They get me. I liken it to sending off sparks: I send out these sparks - ideas, thoughts, intuitive leaps … and my friends catch them and send them back instead of extinguishing them. One of my friends even made me a sweatshirt with sparks embroidered on it …. That’s how much she got me.
And I don’t have to put on the right face for my friends. Through some really dark, despairing times, my friends stayed in it with me, even when I was inconsolable. It’s a hard place to be, staying with someone when there is absolutely nothing you can do or say. When I couldn’t see God at all - I saw them, there with me.
Today a friend (oh, such a treasured friend!) shared something about Moses and Abraham being friends of God “The Lord used to speak to Abraham face to face as a man speaks to his friend.” And one of my favorite verses, John 15: “I have called you friends, because everything the Father has made known to me, I have made known to you.” I like that! Jesus sending out sparks. Telling us what is really important to him. Inviting us to be in it with him.
I want to envision God more like a friend. Sometimes I get so messed up with expectations (you are GOD, so FIX this!) or being afraid of disapproval (still!) or looking for “intimacy”. (OK, I admit it right now, I don’t think I get what “intimacy” with God even means!) But friends… I do get that. I can be friends.
