By Maria Fontaine
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When faced with a close friend moving away, some of us can find ourselves asking, “If God loves me so much, why does He allow my close friends to leave me? I really need that person in my life. Now that I don’t have them, I feel lost and not complete. Lord, why couldn’t You have worked things out a different way?”
Jesus’ disciples probably felt the same. After all, imagine their sense of loss when Jesus left them. Jesus, God’s Son, who had been with them day in and day out, teaching them to love, pouring into them, showing them how to interact in wisdom with others and carry on the mission, supporting them, helping them, listening to them, comforting them, being everything to them, sharing all that He was with them! How much greater a loss could there have been? They must have felt a heartrending sense of loss and uncertainty about how they could go on without Him.
I’m sure that those days in the upper room were times of deep soul-searching, trying to come to grips with the questions that must have weighed so heavily on their hearts. But when they looked to the Holy Spirit for their comfort, whom Jesus had told them He would send, they found the faith and courage to carry out what Jesus was depending on them to do. They knew they couldn’t fail Him even though He was gone from them physically and even though they felt the loss so intensely. With the Holy Spirit’s help, they found comfort and the anointing to carry on His work. Look what happened when His disciples started ministering to those who needed the love and life that Jesus had given them! The Spirit worked mightily through them. Through this they actually grew closer than ever to Jesus, because all that He had given to them began to grow and overflow on others through them.
Our friendships are mini versions of the same principle. When God allows the circle to be broken for a while—sometimes even until heaven—our friendships have the potential to start their own chain reaction that can touch and better many lives, and our own life many times over. The bond of friendship you have with someone is a manifestation of Jesus’ love—His Spirit flowing through you to them, and through them to you.
The greatest thing you can do to show your love for your friend is to make your life a living example of all that person means to you and all that your friendship has been worth. When you use all the beauty, goodness, kindness and lessons you learned together, it becomes a living testimony of your friendship that draws others in and causes that friendship to take on an even greater meaning.
The Lord gave some beautiful and comforting words about friendship, which I want to share with you.
Jesus says,
“Take what your friendship has taught you, those precious things that you gained from each other, and determine to show your love for your friend by using all that you have gained. Those things that your friend has given you and shared with you have become a part of you and will continue to bless your life and the lives of others. That is their gift to you. Your gift to them is to use it to multiply what your friendship has afforded you.
“You’ll find that a part of the old friend lives on and grows in your life to make you a better person, a wiser person. That is the most perfect way to keep that friendship alive and well in your heart. Use it to become a friend to as many others as you can. Your friendships then become truly complete.
“That’s one reason why there is such powerful unity in heaven. All the bonds of friendship and love that you are creating on earth become an eternal joy for you in heaven. You’ll realize there that you never lost a single friend, but that each parting in the physical only brought others into connection, both with you and through you, to all the friends you have gained in this life.
“If you have friends who are remaining with you or are nearby, appreciate their value. If you have friends who are leaving or have left, or if you are in the position of moving and saying goodbye, celebrate the closeness you have had and the gift it has been—and reach out to nurture other such relationships.”
Here are a few classic quotes on friendship. Whether friends have traveled to another continent, whether they have gone to be with Jesus, whether they’re old friends or new ones, one with you or one absent, or whether you’re thinking about your very best friend, Jesus—these reflections can help you focus on the beauty of God’s gift of friendship.
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A true friend is a gift of God, and only He who made hearts can unite them.—Robert South
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By friendship you mean the greatest love, the greatest unselfishness, 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.—Jeremy Taylor
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Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter: whoever finds one has found a treasure.—Sirach 6:14
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A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.—Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Friendship: To be a strong hand in the dark to another in the time of need.—Hugh Black
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Friendship requires great communication between friends. Otherwise, it can neither be born nor exist.—Saint Francis de Sales
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Friendship is a responsibility, not an opportunity.—Benjamin Franklin
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A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.—William Penn
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Cultivate the qualities you desire in a friend, because someone is looking for you as their friend.—Unknown
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Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.—George Eliot
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To the world you are just one person, but to one person you could mean the world.—Unknown
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Good friends are like stars; you don’t always see them, but you know they’re always there.—Unknown
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A friend is one who strengthens you with prayers, blesses you with love, and encourages you with hope.—Unknown
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It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.—Epicurus
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My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.—The one to whom I can say, “I like me best when I’m with you.”—Unknown
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Friendship that flows from the heart cannot be frozen by adversity, as the water that flows from the spring cannot congeal in winter.—James Fenimore Cooper
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A friend is, as it were, a second self.—Cicero
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Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.—Helen Keller
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Friends are God’s way of taking care of us.—Unknown
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Friends are like angels following you through life.—Unknown
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Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.—Anais Nin
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No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.—Francois Mocuriac
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How blessed I am to have known someone who was so hard to say goodbye to.—Unknown
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We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everywhere.—Tim McGraw
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No lapse of time or distance of place can lessen the friendship of those who are truly persuaded of each other’s worth.—Unknown
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The most beautiful discovery that true friends can make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.—Elisabeth Foley
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There is no distance too great between friends, for love gives wings to the heart.—Unknown
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With every friend I love who has been taken into the brown bosom of the earth, a part of me has been buried there; but their contribution to my being of happiness, strength and understanding remains to sustain me in an altered world.—Helen Keller
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True friends are never apart; maybe in distance, but not in heart.—Unknown
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LOSS of one who is dear to you.
INVESTING the blessings of friendship in other lives.
FINDING that friendships lost live on in you and those you reach out to.
ETERNAL bonds of friendship that encompass others and last forever.—Unknown
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Memories last forever, never do they die. Friends stick together and never really say goodbye.—Unknown
Originally published December 2011. Updated and republished September 2012.
Read by Bethany Kelly.
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