Drove home from Alexander City this morning under a vanilla overcast cigar smoke sky, clouds gathered together in grays and purples, spitting a heavy drizzle on my windshield. The trees decided to button up their colorful fall cardigans this weekend and I enjoyed all their glorious colors as I motored home. I was thanking God for a beautiful weekend as the sun burned the clouds away and I drove a few miles under an autumn sunshine, a Monday morning smile from God. Shortly, Father Sky sketched an overcast sky again and a heavy drizzle fell from the clouds. Got home, put on my feeted pajamas, sat in my reading chair, cup of hot coffee in my hand, content, happily remembering the three days I just spent with my dearest friend and her little Charlie Brown. I feel as Hubert H. Humphrey said, “The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it.”

“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” — Thomas Aquinas

This dear friend has supported me for almost 45 years, loved me and my family, held my hands, dried my tears many, many times. She’s a very warm hearted woman with a wonderful capacity to hug you making all right with the world. She’s very unassuming, doesn’t know she leaves a warm smile with every one she passes throughout the day. She knows how to laugh and enjoys a good joke. We’ve laughed this weekend, a lot. We know all our stories and keep all our secrets. She’s the first one I call in a crisis and she can see the pain in my eyes when everyone else sees just a smile on my face. I love this quote, “True friends are never apart, maybe in distance but never in the heart.” We don’t live in the same town anymore but our friendship is still burning bright.

Francis Bacon said, “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” I’m fortunate in my friendships and I know friends are gifts from a loving God. I like to think of Father Sky and the sun as being friends in the evening sky, walking down the horizon through the kaleidoscope colors of a magnificent sunset, hand in hand, as twilight tip toes across my yard. C.S. Lewis wrote “Friendship is the shadow of the evening, which strengthens with the setting sun of life.”

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” — John 15:13

I like to think of God and Jesus as having friends. We read in the Old Testament in James that Abraham “is called God’s friend.” God spoke to Moses “face to face as a man speaks to a friend.” And Bible scripture tells us Jesus told the disciples, “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 I have learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

Proverbs 17:17 states “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” A friendship with God requires us to be obedient to his teachings. A true friend is dependable and always there when we need them. “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: And there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother,” Proverbs 18:24. We build a friendship with God through our prayers and reflections. When we invite God into every aspect of our lives and we live our lives honoring him and his commandments, God gives us comfort and guidance.

We can see God as a friend through his unconditional love, his guidance, and his willingness to always listen to our prayers. He is a constant presence in our lives, a faithful friend.

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson