The unique beauty of college is that it creates space for quickly deep relationships, especially with fellow students who are Believers. These can be soul-satisfying relationships. They aren’t always that beautiful, but some of my best friends came from my college days.
No other aspect of life really compares with college. You may simply have to acknowledge that friendships may not happen that way again. At least, maybe not that easily. Forced proximity, like that of sharing a home or apartment, can create space for similarly close and intimate relationships. But in church, work, and personal life these relationships take so much more effort. I have had deep relationships begin nearly the minute a conversation started with someone new. I have also had relationships forced upon me by highly extroverted women who didn’t even realize I wasn’t looking for a new friend. And I have had relationships that I have spent hours on, yet they have not yet returned to me the fruit of my labors.
Though these relationships all began in different manners and maintain different levels of intimacy, they have in common one thing: they all take significant effort, thought, and care. Whether in the instigation or in the maintenance of a relationship, work is required. Often this work is great fun and so incredibly rewarding; sometimes it is neither.
It took me a long time to realize that all kinds of relationships are needed in our life. Those that stretch us are necessary and strengthening. The depth of character required for less-than-fulfilling relationships is almost a foggy picture of what Christ did in His relationship with us.
But those deeply rewarding, entirely fulfilling relationships that encourage us and provide that ordinary means of grace which God so freely gives in true and beautiful friendships – those relationships keep me going.
As singles I do believe we need to find at least one individual or family with whom we can be very candid, brutally honest, and ask the questions we are working through in our own hearts and minds. A place we can be vulnerable without fear of quick criticism or severe judgment, a relational home here on earth that reminds us of what we will one day have for all eternity with the body of Christ in heaven. Nothing has made me yearn more for that glorious future than fellowship with those Believers who have loved and cared for me through all the horrible and beautiful things of daily life.
They say blood is thicker than water, but the holy water of baptism and the blood of Christ holds me tighter than any earthly family I have.
Not many in our day find it practical to have or to foster such a severe need for the church body and, even more, for specific members of the body. We live in a busy world, a busy nation and culture, a busy town. Individualism has a permanent home here in America. In fact, we’re celebrating it this week by spending millions on bright explosives meant to remind us of the sounds of the war that was fought to free us from kingly expectations. But as Believers, we’re called to something better than the individual. We are called to be in constant fellowship with the King and nearly constant fellowship with the body of Christ, His church.
Find that person, that family. It’s hard, and it may not happen when or how you expect. And one day, you will actually have to say goodbye. But the joy and the small glimpse of eternity that comes with it? It’s worth every tear that comes. Afterall, it is the most beautiful of relationships that bring such painful sorrow in parting. Winnie the Pooh says it best, “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
