Happy or sad

The saddest moment of my life was the suicide of my brother. I have attended many funerals but his was the absolute worse. Although knowing that he had taken his own life was gut-wrenching in itself, the grief was compounded exponentially by the fact that, aside from family, not one person showed up for his funeral; he did not have any real friends and this no doubt contributed to his loneliness and depression. Family members including my sons had to serve as his pall bearers, because he did not have any friends at the time of his death. That is very sad to me.

Contrast that with the experience of a young man who has become a friend of mine in the Tallahassee area who lost his father in law last week and over one thousand people showed up to pay their respects and attend his funeral. This man was truly loved by his community. I have only been living in this community a matter of days and yet have talked to numerous people in the area that knew him and spoke highly of him. Most folks will tell you that they can count their true friends on one hand and then comes along someone like this man who is loved by all who ever knew him.

What was his secret? The Bible tells us that in order to have friends we must be friendly, and no doubt he was. I suppose not many people want to hang out with someone who is unfriendly. As I think about this little verse in the Bible, I wonder what God wanted to tell us. What is God’s meaning for the phrase, “we must be friendly”? It is early in the morning and I have yet to drink my first cup of coffee, but I have to think that God’s version of being friendly is that He wants us to love others as we love ourselves and to treat others as we would like to be treated. In order to do that we must think of others and get the spotlight off of our own lives and desires, and focus on others and what is important to “them”. I have been told of innumerable acts of kindness from taking kids in and working with them to coming to people’s aid for a variety of reasons for the man who died and was genuinely beloved by his community. He exemplified this concept of putting others first.


The Bible tells us that we will always have a friend in Jesus. In fact it tells us that we have no greater friend than Him. He is always willing to forgive and forget, provided we will humble ourselves before Him and acknowledge who He is and what He did for us on a cross. He laid down His life for us and the Bible tells us that giving one’s life for another is the ultimate test of friendship. We are told that Jesus will never desert us and we can take solace in that and I do. No one can judge another, but I witnessed my brother get on his knees and accept Jesus Christ as his Savior a couple of years prior to his death and I am therefore confident that he is with Jesus at this very moment. If he only could have one friend, I am comforted in knowing that it was Jesus and a better quality friend no one could ever hope for than Him.


I enjoy having friends and acquaintances and am hopeful that when I go “toe up” that my family will not end up scratching around trying to find enough pallbearers to put me in the ground. The Bible has much to say about friends and the bottom line is that friends are helpful in our lives in numerous ways, including and most importantly in helping us to maintain our faith. Adversity is easier to overcome if a good friend is there with us. I suppose quality is more important than quantity when it comes to friends, and I would not lose sleep over quantity; however we all need friends. In our quest for friends we should remember that the Bible instructs that first and foremost the righteous must choose his friends carefully lest the wicked lead them astray.

Bottom line: God’s advice on this subject is for us to be friendly, but to carefully choose our friends starting with Jesus Christ.

Proverbs 18:24
A man who has friends
must himself be friendly,
But there is a friend who sticks
closer than a brother.