Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Thursday October 26, 2006

A good friend, author and publisher, Linda La Tourelle wrote and stated:

"Praise God for friends, for they are often the family we wish we had been with or the family we never had."

I wonder why someone always beats me to such grand prose.

And I wonder why we don't bother to really treat our family, which often loves us very much, as we would a dear friend? We simply take our families for granted, much like the famous Thomas Carlyle did when he married his devoted secretary. Clarence McCartney wrote about it.

It seems that Carlyle was a super busy person and as his wife lay dying with cancer he actually neglected her. After her death as he was putting her things he order he discovered her dairy which after some thought he read. In one place she had written:

"Yesterday he spent an hour with me. And it was like being in heaven. I love him so much." He turned a few more pages and read; "I listened all day to hear his steps in the hallway. And now it's late. I guess he won't come to see me." Carlyle read a few more entries and then threw the diary down, and ran through a rain storm to the cemetery. Falling on the fresh earth of her grave he sobbed, "If only I had known, if only I had known."

One thing is for sure, friendship takes time, and friends, while understanding each other's busy-ness, still long to hear the voice, feel the touch of the others hand on the shoulder, and certainly in the deepest friendship of all human relations, that of husband and wife the tenderness of fully expressed friendship.

And sadly many are in families that appear to be devoid of any emotion as far as human relationships are concerned. I have watched dumbfounded while visiting in homes as parents have no feelings at all for the children and the children are viewed as merely another mouth to feed and therefore they are the reason for driving an old car instead of a nice new one. The ease of abortion has thinned the ranks of this particular breed, but there are still many who suffering from this malady for reasons other than children who deprive them of the 'finer' things of life.

If you are welcomed as a friend into a family circle, you must treat this as sacred, even more so that if you were physically born into the family. You are there by trust, and you must never violate that trust.

Christians are in the family by God by invitation and by spiritual birth therefore we carry a double burden to meet the revealed conditions of true Christian friendship. Do not take this wonder lightly.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2006 Use with credit.

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