WHAT A JESUS WE HAVE IN FRIENDS [Sat, 2-27-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

WHAT A JESUS WE HAVE IN FRIENDS [Sat, 2-27-21]

 

Old friends Paul and Judith Unger, in commenting on the CIW of Feb. 25 about the death of Dick Hamilton, quoted “What a Jesus we have in friends.”

What a delightful phrase! I love it! After 65 years of collecting preacher sayings, I thought I had heard them all, but this is a new one to me, in those words, but I certainly have known its truth for a very long time. Good friends probably bring the Christ alive in us more than anything else [except maybe grandbabies and little black dogs].

I was struck, though, as I wrote about Dick, how few friends we have now who can remember him. He, and I, have outlived so many of them.

Helen says that if this pandemic ever ends, we’ll spend a year doing nothing but attending the memorial services that have been put off until people can gather again in person.

During the 17 years in retirement in which we followed grandchildren to far countries--like Mason City, Iowa and Iron Mountain, Michigan-- Helen kept saying, “When they’re grown, we need to get back home so that we can help our friends and they can help us as we get old. Because only old friends share our memories.”

So, here we are, closer geographically to some old friends than to others, but in the general 3I League where we have spent most of our life…except we can’t see our friends! Or anybody else. It’s pandemic time… What a Jesus we have in friends…except Jesus is socially distancing and wearing a mask.

The good thing about having a Jesus in friends is that such friendship doesn’t really depend on physical presence. C.S. Lewis reminds us that we are not a body that has a soul, we are souls who have bodies. We care for one another as we get old through spirit, through prayers and memories and hopes. It would be nice if we could see one another face to face, hold hands as we pray, share the cares of the body as well as those of the soul. As spirit persons, though, not even a virus pandemic can keep us from taking care of one another, because we do have a friend in Jesus as well as a Jesus in friends.

John Robert McFarland