From Kentucky-
What a friend we have in Jesus. It’s how an old hymn begins.
While I personally never sang that hymn much growing up in the Episcopal Church, I somehow know all the words, and for some reason, I recently found myself humming the tune and repeating the words.
What does it mean to be a friend of Jesus? Maybe I was prompted to recall those words because my husband and I traveled many hours to see old friends, ones we hadn’t seen for several years.
From the moment we stepped out of the car after a 10-hour trip and exchanged hugs our conversation seemed to pick up where it had left off four years ago.
Before long we were sitting at dinner retelling old stories, recalling the events and people we had known through the years, laughing at some of the stories and growing solemn and reflective as we talked about friends who had died or were sick.
Literally, the years fell away as we reconnected over that first supper together.
Our experience with those friends led me to think that our friendship with Jesus isn’t much different. Many of us grew up with Jesus; we have hundreds of stories about Jesus that we’ve heard or shared.
Some of us lost faith in the Jesus of those stories as we came to trust the people, places and things of the world, and as adults, we had to become reacquainted with God’s only begotten son.
Some of us were able to keep our knowledge of Jesus intact, but it was knowledge, not friendship that defined our belief.
Some of us want to make our adult relationship with Jesus complex, asking questions like “Did Jesus really say or do what is reported in the Gospels?”
We try to pin down the Son of God, wrestle him to our size, catch him in all his humanity, so that we might craft the relationship with him on our terms.
But that is not only impossible it seems exactly what Jesus doesn’t want from us. From the beginning, he calls us friends.
The rest is here-
http://www.irontontribune.com/news/2009/jul/03/befriending-jesus-paves-way/
No comments:
Post a Comment