My Forever Friend
Her spontaneous, quietly-breathed, perfect-pitched chorus stilled my stress. Stopped me. Calmed me. Reminded me. This was why we were doing what we were doing. This was why everything else became instantly secondary and magically OK.
It was a February Sunday morning, and my daughter and her husband were out the door in the pitch-dark, pre-dawn for worship team warm-ups. Grateful for their willingness to serve, I stayed back with their children in an accustomed to routine, albeit not without a good does of Sunday morning Grammy stress.
While I attempted to appear calm on the outside, my interior voice ran in typical full-speed ahead motion . . . “If I can brush through her tangles while she’s eating breakfast, and then keep them all in eye’s view on one floor of the house while getting him dressed, and then have everything packed and ready by the door—but out of their reach,” and on and on the thoughts raced in my much-heightened years, but much lower reflexes.
With one side of my grandparent brain in full calculation to get us in the van with plenty of margin (for all that you might need margin for with little ones), the other side of my brain was stirring oatmeal and simultaneously monitoring sprinkles being poured on top. Suddenly, out of nowhere and between breakfast bites, the currently quieter of our two-year-old twin granddaughters, broke into the song she sings every week at Prairie Lakes Church[1]. “Jesus wants to be my friend forever . . . Jesus wants to be my friend forever.” With grateful tears, I looked as deep into her beautiful, big eyes as I could and emphasized “Yes, Davy! Yes, He does! He does want to be your friend forever!”
John 15:13-15 reinforces this, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (NIV, italics mine).
While at 2 ½ she may not be able to comprehend deep theological concepts, read the Scriptures on her own, or defend her view on end-times, if she can grasp in the deepest part of her soul that Jesus really does WANT to be HER friend, forever, she will be OK in life. She will be more than OK.
Because what we know is that she’s going to face friendship issues. Someone she thought was a friend will turn on her, another friend will cowardly stand by and say nothing instead of stick up for her, another friend will leave her out, and, quite possibly a whole group of friends will un-invite her to the birthday party. One best friend might move, and another best friend might make the team while she doesn’t. Her little heart will break. Our hearts will break for her and seek to humanly help in any way we can.
Hopefully we’ll also have many days and years of rejoicing over beautiful friendships which God provides in various places and seasons. In fact, we pray for it—we pray for “iron-sharpens-iron” and “closer than a brother” friendships (Proverbs 27:17, 18:24, NIV).
And yet, we know that no-one can carry her through from age two to 92—or as many years as the Lord gives her—as friendship with Jesus can.
As with everything, we find encouragement in God’s Word. Isaiah 41:8 says, “But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend” (ESV, italics mine). And, James 2:23 tells, “And the Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,’ and he was called God’s friend” (NIV, italics mine).
Knowing that, just like Abraham, our grandchild can be God’s friend, gives us hope as we fret over their potential future trials—and, as we fret over what our own final years might hold.
God is our Savior, our King, our Redeemer, our Shepherd, our Provider, and . . . our Friend. I still so often forget—even after sixty years into this thing called life. He wants to be my friend. He is my friend. Maybe even more so—I am His friend. You are His friend! Let’s let that sink in. If He’s our Lord and Savior, we are His friends.
He’s not the friend who will betray us, who won’t be there for us, who doesn’t have time for us, who moves away, who loses touch, who doesn’t know what to say or how to help us, or the here-today but gone-tomorrow friend. He’s the literal “give us the shirt off his back, die for us” Lord who calls His people friends.
No matter where life has us right now in relation to friends—if declining health, conflicting schedules, change in proximity, or even death has separated us from friends, we can cling to the truth that we desperately want our grandkids to know: “Jesus wants to be my friend forever.”
After my little two-year-old’s reminder, I peacefully knew . . . We would continue to get ready for church. We might have a sibling squabble here or there; we might have to head back to the potty after coats are zipped up and boots fully on; Grammy might look a little disheveled, but we would eventually get buckled in. We would drive to church, get everyone out, make the blustery trek across the parking lot and into the church where again, she would hear—they would hear—we would all hear—that “Jesus wants to be our friend forever.” And ever and ever and ever.
He'll see us through our last waking moment this temporary side of eternity and greet us upon our first waking moment on the forever side of eternity.
[1] Prairie Lakes Church utilizes the Orange Curriculum. "Orange has developed the language for the three core truths for Wee Kids—God Made Me, God Loves Me and Jesus Wants To Be My Friend Forever" (personal communication, C. Uhrmacher, Campus Pastor, Prairie Lakes Church).