Real Friendships

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face us with the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

In the hour of distress and misery the eye of every mortal turns to friendship; in the hour of gladness and conviviality, what is your want? It is friendship. When the heart overflows with gratitude or with other sweet and sacred sentiment, what is the word to which it would give utterance? A friend.
--Walter Savage Landor.

The hurried quest of some people to get hold of new friends is so perpetual that they never have time to get acquainted with anyone.
--M. B. S.

Thine own friend, and thy father's friend, forsake not;
And go not to thy brother's house in the day of thy calamity:
Better is a neighbor that is near than a brother far off.
--Proverbs 27. 10.

My Lord and my Friend, I pray that my sympathy may be sincere and comforting, and with a glad heart I may bring rejoicing to my friends. May I learn from thee how I may be a permanent friend. Amen.





When over the fair fame of friend or foe
The shadow of disgrace shall fall; instead
Of words to blame, or reproof of thus and so,
Let something good be said.
Forget not that no fellow-being yet
May fall so low but love may lift his head;
Even the cheek of shame with tears is wet
If something good be said.
--Author unknown.

The right Christian mind will ... find its own image wherever it exists; it will seek for what it loves, and draw out of all dens and caves, and it will believe in its being, often when it cannot see it; and so it will lie lovingly over the faults and rough places of the human heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard, and black, and broken mountain rocks.
--John Ruskin.

To him that is ready to faint kindness should be showed from his friend.
--Job 6. 14.

Lord God, grant that after years of climbing I may not find the mist in my soul has dulled the vision of thy glory. Keep me from the habit of looking for faults, and missing the virtues in others. Forbid that I should be so occupied in taking measure of other lives that I neglect to measure my own. Amen.





It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.
--Sir Walter Scott.

No action, whether foul or fair,
Is ever done, but it carves somewhere
A record, written by fingers ghostly,
As a blessing or a curse, and mostly
In the greater weakness or greater strength
Of the acts which follow it.
--Henry W. Longfellow.

And he said unto them, Look on me, and do likewise: and, behold, when I come to the outermost part of the camp, it shall be that, as I do, so shall ye do.--Judges 7. 17.

Loving Father, may I remember that from the beginning, all things were created beautiful and were given for love. I pray that I may be willing to be guided to the beautiful things of life and receive from them the delight of thy love. Amen.