FRIENDSHIP ISN'T A BIG THING -- Devotional for September 19, from "Good Seeds"

Make sure thy friend. A man of many friends comes to ruin, but look for that friend who will stick to you closer than any brother. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. As perfume makes the heart glad, so good counsel is sweet to a friend. Do not forsake your friend or your father’s friend, for better is a near neighbor than faraway kin. As iron sharpens iron, so one friend sharpens another. (Proverbs 6:3; 18:24; 27:6,9-10,17)

We find in the book of Proverbs a great concentration of teaching on friendship, and more in Proverbs 27 than in any other chapter. We would do well to examine both the encouragements and the warnings concerning friendship that we find in the Bible. The verses before us today focus on the positive aspects of a good friendship. Remember, when it comes to friends, quality is the only thing that counts. As the Prodigal Son discovered, friends are a dime a dozen when you have money to freely spend on them, but “nobody knows you when you’re down and out.” It is when you have nothing to offer except your hurts and your needs that you discover who your true friends are – or even if you have any! As goes the old saying, “A friend in need (in your time of need) is a friend indeed.” This is the friend who will “stick closer than a brother” to you. Kin stick together and stick up for one another because of their common roots. But because “familiarity breeds contempt,” relatives all too quickly desert their own. On the other hand, a true friendship has a kind of glue far stronger than mere common ancestry. Whatever may be the make-up of that glue, it will be a bond that keeps your friend near in your adversity, when anyone else would have disappeared long ago. We sing, “Bind us together, Lord, bind us together with cords that cannot be broken.” But what are those cords? The love of God, surely: the love He has for us, and puts in us, for Him and for others. When hard times come, that’s when you can easily sort your friends into levels of faithfulness. If by that process at least one remains, you are in good shape. This may be the only way – surely it is the most dependable way – to “make sure thy friend.” But then we must give this friend permission to penetrate past our defenses and walls, permission to back us down when we’re wrong, right along with backing us up when we’re right. Those who “kiss up” to us may seem like friends, but a true friend will risk wounding us if he’s confident it is the surgeon’s scalpel he is wielding and not the blackguard’s dagger. His harsh words of rebuke will turn to sweet healing balm, if we will but endure and receive them. Through these principles we can learn that friendship is not a big thing, but rather a million little things!