January 23, 2013
It’s July 4, and like most everyone else in the U.S., I have the day off. The day is destined to be one of those warm, if not hot and sunny, July days, but at the moment the sky is obscured by a morning haze of light cloud cover, and so the atmosphere is cool, enjoyable, fresh, and soothing.
My day begins, as each day invariably does for me, with my taking my jet-black standard poodle for her morning walk, an activity which is high on her list of priorities; she’s raring to go. We have a regular route which encompasses a city block and which takes us about 10 minutes to complete.
Today, however, as we set off on our walk I remember that we are out of oranges. Another of my daily invariables: I like to make a nice glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. Our area is famous for its oranges, and I like to take advantage of the fact.
And so I decide to break from our regular route and instead head for the pretty Catholic Carmelite mission that sits relatively secluded among its orange groves atop a small hill a few blocks away from our house. The mission sells oranges for a couple of dollars a bag. A large plastic bag-full can be purchased by simply folding up your dollar bills and pushing them through the little slot in the locked metal cash box that sits atop a small pole beside the orange shed. This is great, I’m thinking. I can both walk my dog and purchase some needed oranges all in one go.
As we make the trek up the long circuitous drive that wends its way through the pretty, inviting, orange groves to the mission atop the hill, I notice a sign that I had passed by many times previously but which I had never bothered to read. The fading lettering says: “Prayer is nothing more than being on terms of friendship with God.”—St. Teresa
I say a hearty affirmation to that and feel blessed by the beautiful message and retrieve my bag of oranges. My dog is all the while much more interested in eyeing the frisky odd squirrel that darts around the landscape, with happy thought of perhaps giving chase.
Shortly thereafter I’m home, have the dog fed, my orange juice made, and I’m ready for my morning devotional time, and as I crack my devotional book open, unplanned by me, it opens to a chapter entitled “Listening Prayer Is Friendship with God.” Whew, has He ever got my attention!
Coincidence? Nah, I’ve lived long enough with the Lord to know that God is speaking, and I’m excitedly listening. He arranged that small detour this morning and had me pass by and notice that little mission sign because this is part of what He’s speaking to me about today. When I woke I had prayed a little prayer for the day, asking Him to “speak into my day” and for the day to somehow reflect His concerns.
What’s He speaking to me about this morning? Well, obviously at this point, it’s a no-brainer. The subject is friendship. I proceed to enjoy the greatest of devotions, receiving a deeper understanding of friendship than I have ever had before.
And it’s not as if the Lord singled out this day out of the blue, to suddenly start talking to me randomly about friendship, but as He often does, there have been general undercurrents, little impressions, incidents, etc., along the way of late on this very topic. The Lord has faithfully brought these things to the fore in my experiences and upon my consciousness. Today has been only a further fine-tuning, a further crystallization of the Spirit's work.
What kind of things have I learned? Among others that the deep longing that we all experience, the aloneness, which finds partial fulfillment in the companionships we experience in earthly relationships, is only completely fulfilled in relationship, in friendship, with Him.
“You are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you.”1 And I’m starting to realize that among the greatest of our doing is that of being a friend to the Lord; not so much in seeking to do all the right things, but in seeking to be the friend or person able to enter into the type and depth of relationship that the Lord seeks in us. Friendship is identifying in thought and spirit with someone, and as we develop a listening, communing, interactive relationship with the Lord, we enter into true friendship with Him.
Later, having been so inspired through this series of events, I decide to write a small note of thanks and drop it off at the door of the closed front office of the mission.
Dear Ones,
I want to thank you for the blessing I received from your little sign this morning as I walked to retrieve some of your oranges. I would add the following in affirmation:
“The whole discipline of life is to enable us to enter into this closest relationship with Christ.”
With kind regards,
John
1 John 15:14 KJV.
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