A few years ago, a colleague mentioned to me that he was going to meet with David Brooks, the New York Times columnist and author of some of my favorite books. I gave my colleague an assignment: “Ask him what he would do with several million dollars. What does he think the world really needs right now?”
A few weeks later, David published his answer in the New York Times, which really surprised me. His answer surprised me, too: “…friendship is not in great shame in America today [so]…I’d try to set up places that would cultivate friendships.”
Why? Friends help each other make good decisions. They bring out the best in each other. They hold each other accountable.
Good friends help each other become better people.
David Rogers, President, H.E. Butt Foundation
Echoes Vol. 4, No. 3
Dear God, I was trying to think of what I wanted to talk to you about this morning when I sat down to breakfast and I saw the latest issue of the H.E. Butt Foundation’s magazine/newsletter on the table. I opened it up with the intent of being inspired, and the first thing I saw on the inside cover was David Rogers’s editorial on the inside cover. The importance of friendship seemed like something good to pray to you about.
Friendships have been harder to achieve as an adult than I thought they would be. It is so easy to isolate. Even when I’m out in public, it is easy to have a hundred casual relationships that at one level are friends, but they certainly aren’t on a deeper level.
I suppose I’m grateful not only for my wife, but also for a friend with whom I visit every week on the phone. We share our lives with each other. We talk about accountability issues. I wish he lived closer, but, on the other hand, if he lived closer would we make the time to visit like we do now? Is the distance actually good for us in how we discipline ourselves to visit?
I don’t know how many levels of friendships there are, but let’s say I break it simply into three: Superficial, Moderate, and Deep. Superficial are the relationships I have with most of the people in this town. They know me, but they don’t really know me. And I’m the same way with them. Moderate friendships are like the ones in my church group. They are people with whom my wife and I meet once a month and we talk about our lives in those settings, but we don’t really see each other outside of that. Then there are the deep friendships, of which I only have a couple. I’m grateful for them, but I wonder if I shouldn’t have more.
Father, help me to find the relationships you want me to have so that you can use me in other men’s lives and so that you can use them in mine. Help us to sharpen each other so that we might be the men you need us to be for our families, our work, and our community. And most of all, for your glory.
In Jesus’s name I pray,
Amen
Emails to God 