What Love Is This?

I am rich. I have friends.

These are people who are in my life, whom I thought about this morning, and for whom I gave thanks and prayed today.

As someone said in my devotional reading this morning, “Would you rather have one hundred pennies or or four quarters (five twenty-pence coins - for the British! 😉)?”

Some of us have a lot of followers on Twitter and Instagram, and many friends on Facebook. Lots of pennies. But how many real friends do we have, before whom we can be ourselves, people who, by their very presence, enrich our lives?

As I thought about some of those treasures in my life I thought of the one who has walked by my side and put up with me now for thirty years. My Dominican beauty and wife remains faithful and strengthens my life like no one else on earth. A true woman of God.

Then there is Christine, who told me first about Jesus in a way I could understand and spoke truth into my life that was freeing. Distanced now from me by geography and other things, I feel the pain of love unfulfilled today.

And then there is Greg, who believed the message Christine brought to us at school and whose life change made me realise my own need for God. I have not seen him for so many years, and we hardly communicate, but I am sure that when we see each other again it will be like always when we get together - like we never noticed the passage of time and we will spend all night awake laughing and telling stories.

Then there is Patrick. He stood by me in Bible College when I was so spiritually low and bound, and never gave up believing in me. So many doubted my even knowing Jesus, but Patrick walked by my side, listened to my tirades and anger, said little and loved much. I will never forget that. He prays for us now still - every day.

There there is that young Dutch couple. Colleagues who have literally crossed continents to come meet with us and spend time together as our close friends. We cannot get enough of their presence and friendship and regularly give thanks for their lives.

There are others who walk with me today from many different lands, like Rebecca in Central Asia who once hugged me long and hard and called me an older brother that she never had, and Carla, another beautiful woman from Central Asia, whom I met first when she came to a workshop we led in her region and who recently asked my wife and me to be her mentors.

I could list more from Europe, Africa, Central, North & South America, and also from Asia. Some are regularly intersecting with our lives today; others not so much because of geographical distance, but all are real friends, whom we love.

I hasten to say that I do not miss out the One true friend who defines Life and Love … Jesus. The closest friend I have, my elder brother, always with me and hears and responds to my every struggle. As one of my favourite hymns says, “O Love that wilt not let me go”, He is ever faithful (even when I am not).

For whom can you give thanks today?

[N.B. Real names have been replaced above to protect my friends’ privacy]