Skip to main content

waiting...tick tick

It is now 12:42 am on Wednesday and I will leave in 30 minutes to pick Dean up from the airport. Way past my usual bed-time (unless I get into a book and then I have been known to stay up past 2 am - it is always, "Just one more chapter.")

Since I have 30 minutes, I am reading a chapter in The Message and writing something here. This verse strikes me as I read Job 6: "When desparate people give up on God Almightly, their friends, at least, should stick with them."

What would make you walk away from a friend? Many of our friendships are so cheap that we sell them for an insult or a misunderstanding or a moment of hurt and even just because it becomes inconvenient. Unfortunately, I have been in religious and church settings where the slightest hint of scandal or shame caused all the so-called faithful and righteous friends to scurry away from embarrassing or sinful scenes. Jesus was a friend of sinners and I can't really think of many people who aspire to imitate Christ in this area.

Real friends never leave. Even if you ignore them for long periods of time, perhaps reject their advances, and even change your beliefs, real friends are still there...waiting.

1:06 am. Time to change my clothes and pick up my best friend.

Comments

Jen said…
you are my real friend Matte! Thank you for not changing and staying 'you' even when I ran away!
shane magee said…
sin is too easily a cause to reject someone else. i am a sinner. and friendship is under-rated!

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim...

Esther's protest

I have been hesitant to write anything here pertaining to the student protests in Montreal, partly because I didn't believe I had any solutions to offer and partly because I just wanted to stay out of the controversial mess it has become.  Besides, I have studying to do.  But this weekend, something changed.  I read the book of Esther. First, some background:  the unrest started early in the year when a group of students decided to protest the tuition hikes proposed by the Quebec government ($325 a year for the next 5 years).  Seeing that tuition rates have been frozen for almost ten years, it seemed reasonable to the government to increase them to reflect rising costs.  This did not sit well with some students, and they organised an ongoing protest in which students were encouraged to boycott classes and refuse to hand in assignments.  It has now grown into a movement which has staged several organise...