Ok, this has been rewritten a time or two. Thank you all for being good, real friends to me. You have no idea what it means and how much I appreciate it. I think that is what gets me through some days.
I am finding it hard to live on campus. I am weary of the fakeness and false friendship being offered. Everyone wants to be your friend until something better comes along. This is very taxing.
But it helps me to see how blessed I am to have you in my life. I am praising God for you!
4 comments:
Now that you mention it, hmmm, I don't think I want to be your pal anymore!!
Just kidding Laura, though, I know it probably wasn't funny, at all, but I couldn't resist.
I know what you mean. But what can you expect, your maturity can't hold a candle to many that are your peers. The two most lonely places to be are at the top and the bottom. When you are a leader, you are positioned differently, placed so others can fasten on you. When you are riffraff, like myself, you get brush aside and end up looking at alot of backsides. But these are fortunate positions. The unfortunate ones are the middlemen. They all want to be the same, same masks, same facades. Sometimes they look like a flock of sheep, huddling from what they think are wolves. Then other times they are the herd of pigs that go rushing down into the lake. They can't make up their minds. Hot or cold. So they end up being lukewarm.
So, either you can try to take on their semblance, or you can stand apart and be who you are truly. Or you can be like me, a sheep donning wolves clothing and scare them all off, having the pasture all to yourself. Just kidding...again...kinda...
The Word of God declares, "A man of too many friends comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." (Proverbs 18:24 NASB).
When Brock and I found your entry this afternoon, he started writing a response right away, and I started doing a word search in Bible Gateway to find something about friendship I remembered reading in the Bible, so I could quote it to you. The verse I found is not exactly the one I thought I remembered, but it's a start.
As you probably know, I use the Jerusalem Bible, which includes the Apocrypha integrally, not distinguishing those books in any way from the rest of the Bible. Although this is a Roman Catholic-produced version, and not promoted by any Orthodox churches, it follows the practice of the Greek Bible, which is the standard for all Orthodox. Problems are two—Orthodox regard the Apocrypha as of a slightly lower authority than the rest of scripture (yet they never tell you exactly what that means), and there are still about 4 or 5 more books in the Greek Bible that are missing from the Jerusalem Bible. (The New English Bible includes two of them however!) This part of my comment is not really part of my response to your entry; it's just an aside. Your entry is about friendship, and being tired of false friendship. And about the consequent loneliness. Brock's response was serious, tho slightly tongue-in-cheek. You have to be that way in our situation. To be too serious could lead one to despair.
We find ourselves in a world, not just on a campus (tho the world IS a field—"The field is the world"—Matthew 13:38), yes, in a world that is built on appearances. The REAL world that some of us live in is so different that our lives in THIS world become signs to ourselves and to others, we have no choice in this matter. Our lives become signs to those whose world is the here and now, whose eyes are focused only on what is below. At first they may be attracted to us, because there is still something in them (especially if they are Christians) that wants the Good, but doesn't want it enough. That Good, which is in us and in them, is the Seed of the divine Word. When you love the Word enough to desire to live there, it becomes obvious to those who love the appearance of the Word, that you mean what you say, and say what you mean. It's a sign to them, a prophetic sign (seeing and revealing what and Who really is), and that is uncomfortable. The more deeply into the desert the Spirit drives you ("the Spirit drove Him out into the wilderness," Mark 1:12 JB), the more is this world winnowed before your face on the threshing floor of Christ ("His winnowing fan is in His hand; He will clear His threshing floor," Matthew 3:12 JB), and the more you find yourself in the place where Jesus has gone before you, where "He was with the wild beasts, and the angels looked after him" (Mark 1:13 JB).
Dear sister, tho we cannot be with you all the time as to appearances, Brock and I, two of the "wild beasts" spoken of in the God-breathed Book, are with you in God's prayer pocket, and tho our hearts sometimes feel as if they would break for loneliness, in His time God sends the angels to look after us.
Now, for encouragement, these words from the book of Wisdom, one of the apocrypha in the Jerusalem Bible. Why apocrypha? Because the book says inside it, the "wisdom of Solomon," but the Greek church knew that it was written by an anonymous rabbi or rabbis in Hellenistic Egypt after the end of the prophetic age, and so was "on a lower footing" than the rest of scripture. Like the Jews of the 1st century, the early Christians had a hard time giving up these pearls of divine wisdom, and so they added them to the biblical scrolls, just as the rabbinic Jews added the Talmud to their Torah scrolls, but "not in the same place."
[Wisdom, "sophía" in Greek, is considered to be an alias of the Holy Spirit, and is personified in the female gender.]
For within Her is a spirit intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, active, incisive, unsullied, lucid, invulnerable, benevolent, sharp, irresistable, beneficent, loving to man, steadfast, dependable, unperturbed, almighty, all-surveying, penetrating all intelligent, pure and most subtle spirits; for Wisdom is quicker to move than any motion; She is so pure, She pervades and permeates all things.
She is a Breath ("Pnévma") of the power of God, pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty ("Pantokrátor"); hence nothing impure can find a way into Her. She is a reflection of the eternal Light ("Phos"), untarnished mirror of God's active power, image of His goodness.
Although alone, She can do all; Herself unchanging, She makes all things new. In each generation She passes into holy souls, She makes them friends of God, and prophets; for God loves only the man who lives with Wisdom ("Sophía").
[Wisdom 7:22-28 JB]
And finally, what I think I was remembering about friendship, what I wanted to quote for you, comes from the apocryphal book called "Ecclesiasticus", that is, "the Church's book," which refers to the fact that the early Church accepted it as scriptures, but the synagogue did not, again, because it was written in the inter-testamental period in the Greek language by a Hellenistic Jewish rabbi (this time we know his name, Y'shua ben Sirach).
Let your acquaintances be many, but your advisors one in a thousand.
If you want to make a friend, take him on trial, and be in no hurry to trust him; for one kind of friend is only so when it suits him, but will not stand by you in your day of trouble.
Another kind of friend will fall out with you and to your dismay make your quarrel public, and a third kind of friend will share your table, but not stand by you in your day of trouble: when you are doing well, he will be your second self, ordering your servants about; but if ever you are brought low he will turn against you and will hide himself from you.
A faithful friend is a sure shelter, whoever finds one has found a rare treasure.
A faithful friend is something beyond price, there is no measuring his worth.
A faithful friend is the elixir of life, and those who fear the Lord fill find one.
Whoever fears the Lord makes true friends, for as a man is, so is his friend.
[Ecclesiastes 6:6-12, 14-17 JB]
Now, I hope I haven't wearied you by too many words. Myself, I have been in the desert, the deep desert, for a number of days, and so have not been communicative. I also thank the Lord for the blessing of knowing you even a little. And my prayer for you, and Brock, and Jacob and my other sons, is that you young ones do not grow tired or discouraged by the loneliness that you are facing in this world. Even tho He is our true Friend, the only Lover of mankind, the Lord does not expect us to do without friends on our pilgrimage, and He does provide us with friends, but not always according to what we expect, or when. Still, He is the good God, who has not left us orphans, but made us His brothers and sisters, and given us the Kingdom without end.
Go with God, dear sister, and we will see each other soon!
Hello dearest!
This post makes me go: "WHAaaaaaaaaaat?!?!"
Just imagine my strange face as I say that, maybe you can laugh.
That exclamation contains shock and dismay that there is fakeness and falseness going on around and to you! GRR.
I pray that I will never ever be fake or false.
So...hit me if I am.
Aight...nuff of weird comments. Ciao!
Thank you all for your friendship...it means so much to me. I cannot even bring the right words to mind. I love you so much! Thank you...I hope I can someday be as good to you as you are to me!
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