Lately I have been pondering the great mystery of friendship.
Solomon observed that God has “set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV). As we transition through the cycles of life we all have an inner craving for things that are permanent. At the same time, we all know that what we encounter in life is transient. In the context of Solomon’s wisdom I do not believe that he was encouraged by this; probing this realization led only to frustration of the unknowable.
The fields we played in as children become parking lots or subdivisions. Old cars that we love eventually become scrap metal for another generation of automobiles or steel for skyscrapers. Great moments in time become distant memories that, perhaps, someone had the forethought to record in movies or photographs; but, those snapshots in time cheat us of the finer details of the senses remembered with a smile or a quiet tear. We build memorials and museums to capture our history so that we will never forget; and then we forget. We reenact historical events or dress in the time-period with the full awareness that we cannot re-live it.
In his book, The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis observed that it is a mistake to think that these moments in time are ends in themselves. Behind each longing is a secret desire for ‘home’ buried deep within the human heart that we fill with the things of this world turning them into ‘dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.” They are not the substance of eternity but, rather, whiffs of what is to come.
Perhaps no experience in life comes closer to illustrating this reality than friendship. Certainly, acquaintances come and go, relationships wax and wane and partners engage and disengage. Real friendships, however, are those that endure the relocations, the cycles of life and times of exhilaration and those of despair. Found only among a select few in the average lifetime we treasure time together with our ‘best’ friends often in the form of marriage, shared experiences or enduring values. True friendship is honest, confrontational, caring and intriguing. As Solomon observed in Proverbs 27:17: “You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another.” The whole of true friendship becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
When we bring our longing for eternity together with the wonders of friendship we are, on the one hand, reminded that this is transitional as well. In the end, friends die and one remains to carry on alone. The vow of “Till death do us part” knocks on the door to tell us, “It’s time.” In the absence of the real presence of our friend we long for something greater, something to replace the chasm that opens wide within, to embrace something real, substantial, concrete.
Something Solomon only ‘whiffed’ became fully realized at the foot of the cross. What a wonderful door that opened to the human heart! To think that it is entirely possible for a friendship to stretch from our past into eternity creates an elasticity in life that mocks the grave and removes the sting of death (1 Corinthians 15:55). “Forever friends” is more than a wistful placebo in the midst of our grief. It is a present reality anchored in the promise of God Himself for those who share a physical and emotional friendship here on earth but, also, who have gathered around the foot of the cross to share a spiritual friendship in the blood of Christ that answers the cry of the human heart for home.