“I wish you were here,” she thinks, “you always knew how to handle situations like this, even if it usually was far from perfect.” She misses her childhood friend, long dead, and thinks about how much time has gone by since she could ask her friend’s advice. The years that have ticked away. The moments of lost memories; memories that were never formed, never remembered, never forgotten.

There are very few close friends in my life. I’m a moderate introvert, so I find making friends difficult. Well, not so much the making of friends, as I can talk to just about anyone when I want, it’s the growing and keeping them that is like trying to catch seedlings in the wind. I suppose friendships are like plants. If you water and feed them, they blossom into their green finery, but if you let them dry out, then give them too much water to revive the straining, they can be overcome, and the strangling, starved brown ally finds itself in a state of relieved agony. It may recover. It may not. I tend to neglect both friend and fauna, but I’m working on taking better care of the things that matter in life.

What about you? Do you nurture those precious possessions; those irreplaceable gems that add splendor and wonder to the strife of the mundane? Are there times of starvation and drought that could use some sun showers? Or are you a friend that someone calls just because, or the friend that one comes to in a crisis? Can someone depend on you for nourishing their soul, to water their roots and provide sunlight on a cloudy day?
What is a friend to you?

This reminds me of the old timey hymn, “What a friend we have in Jesus.” He is there despite our careless indifference. He waters us, and feeds us in our laxity, and when we pour out our problems, He is there to help us grow and bloom. I can’t glut my redeemer like the poor soul who endures my extremes in care. I take comfort in knowing, “The Lord is at my right hand [always]. I will not be shaken,” (Psalm 16:8), and neither is He shaken, but we have the obligation and the opportunity to love one another in the desert, as well as the spring. I pray that we, in this lost and confused world, can embrace and emanate this exquisite command.

I’m working on it. How ‘bout you?

Til the blessed morrow, stay quenched!