One thing you never do to a friend …

Friendship is one of life’s crowning joys, but describing what exactly “friendship” is can vary as widely as there are people.

For example, Jeremy Taylor offered this snippet about friendship:

By friendship you mean the greatest love, the greatest usefulness, the most open communication, the noblest sufferings, the severest truth, the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds of which brave men and women are capable.

A British publication once offered a prize for the best definition of a friend. Among the thousands of answers received were the following:

“One who multiplies joys, divides grief, and whose honesty is inviolable.”
“One who understands our silence.”
“A volume of sympathy bound in cloth.”
“A watch that beats true for all time and never runs down.”
The winning definition read: “A friend is the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out.”

Perhaps you would prefer C. Raymond Beran’s take on friendship as shared in Bits & Pieces:

What is a friend? Friends are people with whom you dare to be yourself. Your soul can be naked with them. They ask you to put on nothing, only to be what you are. They do not want you to be better or worse. When you are with them, you feel as a prisoner feels who has been declared innocent. You do not have to be on your guard. You can say what you think, as long as it is genuinely you. Friends understand those contradictions in your nature that lead others to misjudge you. With them you breathe freely. You can avow your little vanities and envies and hates and vicious sparks, your meannesses and absurdities, and in opening them up to friends, they are lost, dissolved on the white ocean of their loyalty. They understand. You do not have to be careful. You can abuse them, neglect them, tolerate them. Best of all, you can keep still with them. It makes no matter. They like you. They are like fire that purges to the bone. They understand. You can weep with them, sing with them, laugh with them, pray with them. Through it all — and underneath — they see, know, and love you. A friend? What is a friend? Just one, I repeat, with whom you dare to be yourself.

If any of the above are a good description of what friendship is, then is it any wonder that scripture provides us with this blunt exhortation …

“Never abandon a friend — either yours or your father’s. When disaster strikes, you won’t have to ask your brother for assistance. It’s better to go to a neighbor than to a brother who lives far away,” Proverbs 27:10.

If you’ve ever experienced the blessing of friendship, you might think it almost silly to even have to provide such an exhortation to anyone!

But it is needed.

Almost incredulously, people in our culture are routinely turning their backs on friends. The reasons vary, but most are foolish.

Are you a loyal friend? Or have you allowed foolishness or selfishness to lead you to abandon a friend?

Scotty