A friend, a true friend, a good friend—what a treasure! Time together is sweet. Time apart is sustained by a relationship that doesn’t need to be continually focused on. A marriage can enjoy such friendship. Friendship can pervade a group.
Friendship is based upon love, the desire to do good to others. Love, true and real love, is divine. It comes from God. As we grow, the spirit within leads us to realize more and more the presence of the loving Father, so close, so loving, so present. The more we realize the loving Father’s presence, the less we can tolerate any times when our attitude betrays that love by anger or any other unbeautiful emotion. We want to return to the circuits of love.
Divine love teaches us that we are all family, all brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the living God. Each person is a divinely created, infinitely loved, spiritually indwelt, evolutionary, free-will son or daughter of God. Abiding in loyalty to those universal truths, when we see a person, our love springs up easily, spontaneously, naturally. Then comes the process of learning to love the other person, coming to understand them and support them as they cope with life’s difficulties.
When friendship is based upon universal love, it is cosmic. Other friendships and group allegiances can become narrow-minded and lose the quality of true friendship.
Ultimately, friendship with others rests upon the truth and fact that God is our friend. We can go to him any time. Nothing is too big or small to share with him, to ask of him, to celebrate with him. We make ourselves, mind and soul, into a place of hospitality to receive his extraordinary, delightful, loving presence. Now there is a true friend! We learn a new quality of righteousness from this intimacy of love and mercy.
The photo is of the British pop group, Brotherhood of Man, whose primary success was in the 1970s; this photo is from the 1990s.
Just as love is the greatest spiritual reality, true friendship is the greatest manifestation of that love. While in this life, we must never forget that we are growing spiritual children, and it is not strange that we are not always able to live us to this ideal of love and friendship. But one day we shall be filled with the fullness of the Father’s love and its manifestation of friendship.
While it is difficult not to focus on our sometimes shortcomings, let us rejoice in the times we have been able to show this love and friendship. Let us rejoice in our forward spiritual progress, and be thankful when we realize that we have fallen a little short, for to realize our shortcomings is to be placed in a position where we can redouble our efforts to do the Father’s will which is the secret to our becoming perfect as he is perfect.
Though my beginning is humble with my feet rooted in the mud and mire, I am still on my way to seeing him, and on my way to becoming perfected in his love. I will see all of you there, and what a blessed day that will be.
Dr. Perry