Friends
We seniors need friends the way a bee needs honey and a fish needs water. Wherever we go, whenever we meet people, we should be conscious of how vital it is that we establish lasting friendships. It is far more important than making money. I hope this book falls into both friendly and friendless hands, for the longer I live, the more convinced I become that just about everything worthwhile that happens in life happens through friendship.
But it's not just in this life that we old-timers need friends. We're facing some big changes. I spend a lot of time teaching and encouraging fellow writers, and I tell them, "Getting into print is like getting into Heaven: It's not what you do but who you know!"
As we older citizens travel month by month up the scale of years and down the scale of vigor, friendship becomes almost a matter of life and death. A visit to any nursing home will underscore that statement. But before we take the lid
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off this extremely important subject, we need to remind ourselves that all human friendships are simply icons or reflections of the Divine friendship. Scripture strongly implies that it was the Creator's idea to bring His creatures together as friends because intimate personal relationship is the essence of His nature.1
Abraham and Moses are called friends of God. That is the highest tribute recorded in the Old Testament. The text seems to indicate that not only were they able to call God their friend, but that He considered them His friends.
The New Testament takes an equally positive view of friendship. During His time on earth Jesus made personal relationships the foundation of His preaching of the good news of the Kingdom. He gathered His friends, trained them, and sent them out. He told them, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." Jesus also made the startling statement, "You are my friends if you do what I command."2 A respected colleague of mine, the late Alexander Miller, once observed that in those ten words our Lord set up a seemingly impossible contradiction. Miller explained that one makes friendships by issuing commands; rather, a commanding attitude will quickly destroy any possibility of friendship. The exception is Jesus.
It's true, isn't it? Put aside for the moment the question of employment. When a friend of mine starts giving me orders, unless he is actually shouting that my life is in danger or something similar,
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I will probably continue to regard him as an acquaintance but hardly as a friend. Jesus' commands, however, were unique. He commanded His disciples to believe in Him and to love one another. Furthermore, he made it clear that He regarded His disciples as His personal friends: "No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends."3
And so as we recognize the urgent need to reach out for friendships in old age, we begin by seeing what tremendous importance Jesus attached to friends. During His brief, incomparable ministry He had no staff, no team, no special assistants, personal servants, aides-de-camp, or bodyguards. But He had friends.
The early Christians were actually known as "Friends" — a label the Quakers have since adopted as their own. John's third letter closes with the words, "Our friends greet you. Greet the friends by name."4 The commentators tell us that the two key elements of friendship in the Bible are commitment and loyalty, and both are reflected in a hymn that is certainly one of the most popular in the English language: "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." I can't think of better words to express this relationship and what it means to those who have it.
Over the centuries many thousands of books have been written seeking to explain the astonishing success of the early church in its outreach to the peoples of Asia, Europe, and Africa. The famed historian Edward Gibbon insisted that
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success was due not to the blessing of God, but to the improved communication facilities of the Roman Empire, the zeal of the Christians, their doctrine concerning immortality, their claim to miraculous gifts, their pure morals, their efficient organization, and their discipline.
Gibbon's account of the expansion of Christianity has been widely criticized since he completed his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1787. More recent historians, however, have offered many additional reasons for the early church's success. Without claiming to be a professional historian, I would like to join the chorus and add two more that I think had a significant impact on the spread of Christianity.
The first reason is the spiritual friendship that existed between the apostles and their risen Lord. Those who are unaware of the resources of the Holy Spirit cannot fathom the power that was generated in those early prayer meetings. But a hint is given in a letter written from Bithynia by a provincial official, Pliny, to the Roman Emperor Trajan in A.D. 112.5 In this letter Pliny stated that certain Christians had told him "it was their habit on a fixed day to assemble before daylight and recite by turns a form of words [sing a hymn?] to Christ as God; and that they bound themselves with an oath . . . not to commit theft or robbery or adultery [and] not to break their word." No one knows how the gospel was carried to Bithynia, near the Black Sea. However, Pliny's letter accuses the Christians there of "obstinacy and unbending perversity." What does that tell you
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about faithfulness, loyalty to Jesus, endurance, courage, and the stuff of which martyrs are made?
The second reason is the bond of friendship that linked the early brothers and sisters together with love for each other. By way of illustration, turn to the sixteenth chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans and read there the outpouring of affection he expressed for his fellow Christians. Men and women alike he called "beloved in the Lord." Or turn to Paul's letter to the Philippians and read his beautiful opening salutation: "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you."6 Tertullian, an African disciple writing in the late second century A.D., challenged his own generation with the words, "See how these Christians love one another!"7
Cut away from the early centuries and come down to the late twentieth, and take a look at the current older generation. What do you see? Millions of older people are among those in dire need. Many are homeless refugees or are living in dismal shelters without adequate food or clothing. A large percentage of them are friendless. Their friends are dead. They have no one to call upon for help. To be in want is bad enough, but even after the bare physical necessities have been met, there remains a need for that without which existence can never become truly living — human companionship. When I visit a rest home and observe older people courageously living solitary lives, without any apparent attention from friends or loved ones, I want to cry.
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Had it not been for friends, my own life would be in shambles today. Whenever I pause to think of particular persons who have interceded for me in serious situations when I was unable to help myself, who have spoken a good word on my behalf to the right person at the right time, who have introduced me to other friends who have opened up new and wonderful experiences for me, I can only say with Paul, "I thank God — through Jesus Christ our Lord."8
I remember the year 1934 when, a homesick young Californian, I returned from Hawaii after spending a year as a town reporter on a Hilo newspaper. I worked my passage as an oiler in the engine room of a Matson sugar freighter and arrived in San Francisco with no place to stay, no job, and almost no money in the pit of the Great Depression. Friends took me in. A fraternity brother reporting on the San Francisco Examiner spoke to his city editor for me. Mr. Hearst offered me a job paying fifteen dollars a week. For the next year I chased ambulances, covered fires, murder trials and sensational divorce cases, wrote football, and kept an eye on city hall.
Twenty-four years later a friend introduced me to Billy Graham. I was pastoring a church in Oakland and our people were supporting Billy's Crusade in San Francisco's Cow Palace. Billy and I became warm friends, despite the demands on his time, and what a wonderful friend he proved to be! I did not know he wanted to start a magazine or that he was looking for an editor with (among other qualifications) professional
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journalistic experience. I was further unaware that my credentials were up for review, but there they were: "Reporter for the San Francisco Examiner." In order for Billy to find out more about me, calls were made to my friends. As a result I became founding editor of Decision magazine, whose circulation rose to five million.
Friends! I would be a fool to call myself a self-made man and the last to suggest that anyone "do it my way." Nor can I claim credit for the blessings that have come to our home. Whenever God allows me the privilege of introducing a friend to someone else, I recall different times when someone introduced me to an individual who later became my friend. Sometimes as a result of such introductions, God has steered other lives in new directions with fresh opportunities opening up for them.
Dr. Samuel Johnson said, "If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone."9 He could have said the same of a woman. Old friends are choice, but so are new friends and we find them in many places and of various ages.9 We seniors should never let pass an opportunity to meet them. It's a major blunder for us to make friends exclusively among people our own age. If we do that we let the world segregate us! Young people whose appearances make them seem to our generation as if they came from outer space are actually eager to make friends with us. Many of them covet a warm-hearted relationship with an older person. (I view it as a possible
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answer to our present urban gang crisis.) Similarly, middle-aged people now in their forties and fifties would like to become friends with us because they see in us what they will be shortly. They are curious to know how life is treating us, how we feel, how we spend our time, what works for us and what doesn't.
One of the most heartwarming experiences of life is becoming grandparents. To make friends with little children, especially if they are one's own progeny, is a free ticket to happiness. Yet many Americans are finding distance a real obstacle to grandparenting. Families move away, taking the children, and visits are few and far between. In such cases many are becoming "adoptive grandparents" to children in the neighborhood or in the church family. Children are quick to respond to such a relationship. And the resultant outpouring of affection is a blessing to young and old alike. If there are no children around you, and your own family is not nearby, find yourself some little friends. You won't be sorry!
It so happens that once we pass a certain age, some of us find it hard to make friends. We are ashamed of our wrinkles or feel bad about our afflictions and hate to inflict our feelings on others. Some older people are in retreat from life; they have been hurt so badly that they are quite withdrawn. They turn morose and feel extremely sorry for themselves. Even while they curl up and nurse their wounds, they hope that someone will take pity on them and try to comfort them.
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The older person who is in retreat from life is in a dangerous state of mind. To reject friendly overtures without good cause is to invite the Devil in for a field day. Anything can happen. To turn one's face to the wall, cultivate one's grievances, and make a whimpering pitch for sympathy is to lose what friends one still has. Such behavior does not create pity in the comforter, but rather disappointment, weariness, and eventually neglect.
Even when we are so tired that we want nothing other than to be left alone, it is vital to keep our friendships in repair. If we must grumble, let it be a grumble with a touch of humor. The Bible says, "A man who has friends must himself be friendly."10 Letters, cards, packages, telephone calls, invitations, video cassettes, all can help to keep friendships warm. Who knows when we may need those friendships — desperately? And who knows when we ourselves will have an opportunity to minister to a friend? Dale Carnegie, whom I once heard lecture at the University of Missouri, (and who declared, "All I am teaching you is what Jesus said in different words,") had this to say about friendship: "You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."11
I am aware, as you are, that friends sometimes let us down. King David speaks of that, too, and the knowledge that he had experiences similar to ours makes us better able to handle our disappointments. David wrote:
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Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted,
Who ate my bread,
Has lifted up his heel against me.12
Friends are human. They also forget, and get caught up in their own situations, and ignore us. Even so friendship remains one of God's best gifts.
The Bible also provides us with some classic stories of friendship: Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan, Paul and Timothy. It speaks of a friend "who sticks closer than a brother."13 We read in the book of Job that "the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends"14 — a beautiful touch. Friendship. What a priceless possession! And yet it is not a possession at all; rather it is a gift of God, and it is to be received with thanksgiving. Some friends are naturally closer than others. Our Lord had many friends, but three — Peter, James, and John — seem to have had a special place in His heart. We also find we have more in common with certain friends than with others, but that doesn't mean that the others are not our friends! Sometimes after we have befriended one of the others in a crisis, we learn that he or she had more in common with us than we realized. So it is that friendship demands time and effort, just as a plant requires watering. Without such our lives can become like deserts.
Now that I am retired, I like to think about
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friends I have known over the years. Many of them are gone, but their memories are still fragrant. And then I think of Jesus, the best Friend I've ever had, and how through Him when I was sixty years of age the love of God was poured out into my heart by the Holy Spirit. I think of how, as a result, a wound in my family was healed, and my two living brothers and I were reconciled after a long separation. I think how, after losing my wife of forty-six years (and what a friend she was!), I have been blessed in my autumn season beyond anything my mind could conceive by my present wife, a lovely daughter of Manitoba and a longtime friend. I think of these things until I can only acknowledge, "This [is] the Lord's doing. And it is marvelous in [my] eyes."15 Emerson was surely right: The only way to have a friend is to be one.16
But after we have raised all our toasts to "friendship that will live for years through fortune, failure and through tears," we have to admit that friends and loved ones cannot supply us with the relationship we most need. Unless our friendships are rooted in Heaven, we are dealing only with shadows or at best icons of reality. Someday rather soon we older ones will all be standing before the awesome majesty of the triune God. What a moment that will be for us as our lives pass in review! But at the same time, what a glorious thrill it will be to recognize there the smiling face of Jesus, and then to relax and announce to all the universe amid the mighty vaults of Heaven, "He is my Friend!"
Chapter 10 || Table of Contents
1. See Genesis 2:18.
2. John 15:13-14
3. John 15:15
4. 3 John 14.
5. See A New Eusebius, J. Stevenson, ed. (London: S.P.C.K., 1982), 13-15.
6. Philippians 1:3.
7. Tertullian, Apologeticus, Familiar Quotations, Bartlett, ed. (Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing, 1944), 1012.
8. Romans 7:25.
9. From Boswell's Life of Johnson, quoted in F.P.A.'s Book of Quotations, 366.
10. Proverbs 18:24.
11. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936), 87-88.
12. Psalm 41:9.
13. Proverbs 18:24.
14. Job 42:10.
15. See Mark 12:11.
16. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "On Friendship."
