"Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act. Do not say to your neighbor, 'Come back later: I'll give it tomorrow'-when you now have it with you" (Proverbs 3:27-28).
Childhood memories bring a smile often to my face. Remembering the times when my parents sat at the kitchen table with friends playing Parchessi, or Monopoly, Scrabble, and eating Star's Ice Cream made locally. While they played and laughed and teased each other us kids were outside playing and just enjoying life. It wasn't money that was being shared; it was life. These life-long friendships cherished, even when life needs required their absence they stayed in touch. Ministering to seniors, as I do each Sunday night, I find the one sadness that is common among them; the loss of their friends. Not just losing them due to death but not being able to participate in life with them. All too often, a new life has emerged taking their friends into new directions, not just traveling, or moving to new communities, caught up in the new culture, one that does not value as in the past just spending time with friends. It is time we have "now" and holding off our sharing time until tomorrow is holding off the "good" the writer of the above proverb had in mind.
I love good Bible Studies, going out to lunch with friends after church services and those are good things to be shared. I believe that some good 'Ole Home Cooking' and spending time, not in a restaurant with the clamor of people, the clanging of dishes, but some good old home time. Enjoying each other, talking about everything and nothing, showing the new blooms on your roses, possible making home-made ice cream, not in an electric ice cream maker but in the old hand grinding type, with the kids sitting on top of the ice and dreams of eating some as soon as it is done. Happy times, not filled with things or doing, just enjoying each other. We need to return to those times, spending time with our eternal brothers and sisters, time where children can see parents in action with others. No, we can't return completely, life has gotten quite complicated, but that does not preclude the holding off of sharing time, it is a matter of priorities. Jesus spent time with people, not just His disciples, but with people, eating in their homes, talking about anything and everything, even told some parables.
Do we really care that some entertainer has a new dress? Maybe they got into a scuffle at a restaurant. Much that I see on the Internet home page is all about those kinds of things, meaningless, who really cares? Are they really all that important? Where are our priorities? I noticed that when I go to the movies with a friend, spending time together, we really don't spend time together, he sits eating his popcorn, I sit eating my popcorn, and for two hours or so we sit next to each other and hardly a word is spoken between us, well, I do shout at him when he tries to eat my popcorn, I yell, "get your hands out of my popcorn, eat your own." Great conversation, right? Am I saying that we should not go to movies, carefully chosen I hope, NO! Nor am I proposing not going to lunch or dinners with friends in restaurants. NO! What I am saying is this, we need each other and only when we truly spend time with each other as done in the past, will we be sharing the good with our friends and demonstrating a better form of life to our children who need to see life from a perspective that this world is not providing.
"Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart. and the pleasantness of one's friend springs from his earnest counsel" (Proverbs 27:9). Many of us have great friends, continue cultivating that friendship, invite others into your circle. I want for myself to expand on the advice given to us by the writer of Hebrews, all too often we use this as should be to going to church, but I posit a slightly different view, expand it to our homes. "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching" (Hebrews 10:24-25).
Daily Prayer:
Help me LORD to see where I can be a friend to someone, not just my regular friends, but to someone who needs a friend, those silent people who sit quietly at the back of the sanctuary, who are in great need of a friend. Live through me Jesus, you never turned down meeting with those in need, in fact you searched them out. May my life be as Yours. Give to me a refreshing of an eternal view and forgive me where I have let this world dictate to me how to live. Thank you for forgiveness and for the comfort you have shown me. Amen
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