Encouraging - Relationships

Deep friendships are more than a convenient way to manage crisis. Sure, it’s great to have friends help us in dark seasons, but our need for friendships goes deeper than support. Close relationships are at the root of what life was meant to be about. Just before Christ went to the cross, He could have done anything, but He chose to spend time with His closest friends. Scripture preserves for us those friendship vignettes: the Last Supper; praying with Peter, James, and John in the garden, and even on the cross when He thought of His mother’s well-being and asked John to look after her. Taking the sins of the world was something Christ did by Himself – in that moment He was separate from everything – but He walked through as much of the experience as possible with the help of His community of intimate and most cherished friends. His pattern of relationships shows us the way to live.

Doug Fields, Fresh Start: God's Invitation to a Great Life (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, TN: 2009), 115.