11.22.2013 PETERSON 2 - friend

...friendship is a much underestimated aspect of spirituality.
it's every bit as significant as prayer and fasting.
like the sacramental use of water and bread and wine,
friendship takes what's common in human experience and turns it into something holy.
friendship with david complicated jonathan's life enormously.
he risked losing his father's favor
and willingly sacrificed his own royal future.
but neither the risk nor the loss deterred him;
he became and stayed david's friend.
jonathan's friendhip was essential to david's life.
it's highly unlikely that david could have persisted in serving saul without the friendship of jonathan.
jonathan, in striking contrast to his father, discerned God in david,
comprehended the danger and difficulty of his anointing
and made a covenant of friendship with him.
jonathan's friendship entered david's soul in a way that saul's hatred never did.

...martin buber, a great jewish man of God who encountered and survived much enmity in his lifetime
was a guest at haverford college, a quaker school in pennsylvania.
douglas steere was his host when they attended a quaker meeting.
one man broke the silence of the meeting to speak of
the great experience of meeting across language, racial, and religious boundaries,
the wonder of being able to reach across the barriers and touch another human being,
the touch turning strangers into friends.
then buber..said that meeting another was a great thing, but not the greatest thing.
the greatest thing any person can do for another is
to confirm the deepest thing in him, in her
-to take the time and have the discernment to see what's most deeply there, most fully that person,
and then confirm it by recognizing and encouraging it.

each of us has contact with hundreds of people who never look beyond our surface appearance.
we have dealings with hundreds of people
who the moment they set eyes on us begin calculating
what use we can be to them,
what they can get out of us.
we meet hundreds of people who take one look at us, make a snap judgment,
and then slot us into a category
so that they won't have to deal with us as persons.
they treat us as something less than we are;
and if we're in constant association with them, we become less.(note: ..necessarily?)

and then someone enters our life who isn't looking for someone to use,
is leisurely enough to find out what's really going on in us,
is secure enough not to exploit our weaknesses or attack our strengths,
recognizes our inner life and understands the difficulty of living out our inner convictions,
confirms what's deepest within us. a friend.

it's a great thing to be a jonathan.
without jonathan, david was at risk of either abandoning his vocation
and returning to the simple life of tending sheep
or developing a murderous spirit of retaliation to get even
with the man who was despising the best that was within him.
he did neither.
he accepted jonathan's friendship and in receiving it
received confirmation of samuel's earlier anointing to kingwork
and the God dominated imagination
that made it possible to live in and by God's Spirit in song and story.

lacking confirmation by the word of a friend,
(note: the old hymn...'what a friend we have in Jesus all our sins and griefs to bear,
what a privilege to carry, everything to God in prayer)
our most promising beginnings fizzle.
lacking confirmation in the presence of a friend, our bravest ventures unravel.
it's not unusual for any of us to begin something wonderful
and it's not unusual for any of us to do things that are quite good.
but it IS unusual to continue and to persevere...