Do you ever feel like God's better friends with someone else than He is with you?
I know that sounds sort of surface and a little silly, but I think it's an easy impression to get. I think it's one I carried a lot this year. I finally decided to be honest about it with Jesus. So I told him, "Jesus, I feel like You're a lot better friends with this person than you are with me. And I've spent a lot of time trying to get to know You."
And I think Jesus was up in Heaven chuckling at me, to be honest, because He handed down a very simple explanation that slightly exploded my cranium.
Here's the thing: if you and I are friends, I may or may not realize it unless you very blatantly say, "We are friends." I don't know why it is, but that is one of the very simple things I miss all the time. (I miss a lot of simple things. For example, I forget than I can turn right on red. Often. I can store a plethora of ridiculously complicated information and a myriad of philosophies, but the common sense incidentals sometimes go right over my head. It keeps me humble, I suppose.)
Anyway, I cannot even remember how many times someone has told me, "I consider you one of my very good friends," and I've silently said to myself, "Oh. Really?" It's not that I'm utterly surprised by someone I consider a complete stranger. It's just that I tend to live every moment for itself, and before I know it, I look back to find I've spent a lot of time with such-and-such a person and--voilà! We're brilliant friends, and I never really took note of it.
(Another aside: words containing special characters bother me. They require me to visit Wikipedia to copy and paste the letter with the correct accent, thus transforming a spontaneous word like "voilà" into a process.)
I digress. This pattern of unrecognized friendship is already prevalent and acknowledge in my social understanding. What Jesus had to say was this: "You're the same way with Me. We spend a lot of time together. We're friends! It just didn't click."
I love that.
I'd say more, but I have a Friend I want to spend some time with now.
I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends...
John 15:15
