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Brothers & Sisters in Christ,
We live in an age that creates hurdles to friendship.
- Unlike many people in previous generations who lived and died within a few miles of where they were born, we are much more transient in this century. This makes long-term friendships harder to develop and even harder to maintain.
- Our fast-paced world threatens the leisurely conversations we would like to share routinely with trusted friends. Instead, our conversations are reduced to texts and voicemails.
- We live in the social media age, where we share our lives through snapshots carefully selected to cultivate perception instead of depiction reality. We scroll through each other’s highlight reels, fighting off the envy that seeks to take a grip on our souls.
- These days parents spend their non-working hours chasing their children's activities, whereas in previous generations adults often belonged to social and civic organizations, by gender, where common interests encouraged adult friendships.
- In this decade of cultural polarization, we tend to slip into partisan echo chambers where we are told by the talking heads on television that persons with different perspectives are our enemies.
- The advent of robotics and AI technology threatens to further decrease the frequency and depth of human interaction. There are even robotic ethicists pondering whether there will be robot and human friendships in the future.
Human beings are hard-wired with the capacity and desire for friendship. This aspect of our humanity comes from our having been made in the image of God. God is relationship as the eternal undivided communion of one God - Father, Son & Holy Spirit.
Because our capacity for friendship comes from God, and God in Christ has "made his home among us" (John 1), true Christian friendships are deep and lasting. Christians have the example and power of Christ to foster friendship virtues of honesty, loyalty, compassion, forgiveness and generosity. And further, we are connected at a soul-level because we share the same Holy Spirit.
I hope you will join us this Sunday at 9a or 10:30a as we begin our new series: "Reclaiming the Lost Art of Friendship". Scripture has much to say about the new community God is making in the Church. It is fertile ground to become and grow together as friends.
With hope,
+ Pastor Nathan
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