Friends

I have some amazing friends. When I came home with four carousels of old fashioned slides that miraculously came my way for my new book, I had no way to view them. After a plea on Facebook, friends offered me a vintage carousel projector, a projection screen, and an afternoon to help me make the slides digital for my book.

That last one was no small offering. Each slide, were I to pay to have them digitalized would have cost about $1.50. My friend, Melissa, has a scanner at her home that would do it for free. Each slide would take about 5-10 minutes ...I had 20 slides. That meant 2-3 hours of scanning! Melissa made it sound like this huge assault on her precious time was doing HER a favor- "While I digitalize the slides, we can chat!" she told me. She even sounded DELIGHTED.

Three hours later, I headed home with my twenty slides not only digitalized, but cropped, edited, and all put in a single folder in my Pictures album (the amazing Brian, her husband, synched them to my computer for me). All this occurred while I had a single task assigned to me: sit and chat.

I don't deserve Brian and Melissa. All I can do is praise God that for whatever reason, I am blessed to be their friend.

It made me consider what it takes to be an extraordinary friend:
1. Make yourself available to others, especially in time of need.
2. Always make others feel welcome, not as though you are too busy for them or their presence is an intrusion
3. Make them feel as though they are doing you a favor gracing them with your visit
4. Laugh, and smile, and make their world feel like it really is a special place and we are all enjoying the ride together.
5. Make them feel that everything they say is brilliant, and illuminating, and has blessed your day.
6. Make them feel that they are the most special human beings on earth, and your whole family wishes they could see more of them.
7. Offer the perfect words of advice and encouragement at just the right time so that instead of feeling defeated, they walk away thinking, "I can do this."
8. Make them feel that in this vast and sometimes frightening world, they are not alone.

One of the most powerful verses in the Bible is when Jesus tells the disciples, "I call you friend." Jesus, God Himself, wants to befriend us! What a monumental statement that is, miraculous even. And God chooses to befriend us for a purpose. In that same passage, He tells the disciples He chose them so they could go forth and spread fruit- the glorious message of hope and salvation. But first, God tells them, "I call you friend." There is obviously a very special value placed on being a friend. I am not as good a friend as I want to be. But at least I have a wonderful role model.
Bless you, Melissa!

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I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other. (John 15:15-17 ESV)



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