Day 4: What a Friend We Have in Jesus

The video I added today is a vocal quartet arrangement of What a Friend We Have in Jesus.  It is really lovely.  Also, if you are a country music fan, Brad Paisley does an acoustic guitar version without words, but it is still beautiful.  His version isn't on Youtube, but if you have access to his guitar album "Play", it is on there.
I think it is a truth that the friends we choose help us to learn a lot about ourselves and are a big part of who we become in our life.  Proverbs puts it well: "As iron sharpens iron, so does one person sharpen another."  God gave us friends for a reason, the same reason He created us.  He didn't want us to be alone.  He wanted to give us a community here on earth as a foretaste of what a community with Him will be like in heaven.
In my 20 years I have started to grow some philosophies on friendships.  They are a product of my own experience, but I think others can relate to some of them.  They are still rough and in the works, but here are a few thoughts:
I don't believe in the term "best friend."  That is definitely from my jaded middle school days, where you turn around every 5 seconds to find a giant knife in your back.  I'd rather use the term closest or dearest, because that accurately describes where I hold my friends in relation to my heart.  I feel like best comes with too many expectations.  We are humans and we fall short.  But a closest or dearest friend will always have a place close to my heart even when the going is rough.
I also believe that God puts friends in our lives at all different times.  This summer I got together with a good family friend that I met when I was four.  We sat for a few hours and talked and it was like no time had passed since I met her and thought her light up Skechers were the coolest thing in the world, so therefore we had to be friends.  I also got spend the summer growing relationships with 7 other young adults as we ministered to campers.  I am so grateful that God brought us together this past summer, especially the three ladies that I worked with.  They have places very close to my heart.
Having Jesus as a friend says a lot about who we are.  He is the ultimate model of what a friend should embody, and at the same time, He is the ultimate model of grace and forgiveness - He wants us to be His friend even in our shortcomings and imperfections.  Even though we fall short and encounter snags in our friendships, Jesus works in our lives, and the lives of our friends to give us a glimpse of what it is like to to be in a heavenly community with Him.
~SP