Practicing the One Another's

Three years ago today, March 29, 2009, God had it in His mind for the beginning of a gift to be given to two women who had been praying, unbeknownst to the other, for the same thing for many years. Little did we know that a simple offer for a cup of coffee to be shared, would result in one of the sweetest friendships either could possibly imagine.

Through God's reconciling work in Jesus, God makes possible our friendship with Him and with one another. Through friendship, we participate in the radical hospitality that God offers the world in Christ. One of the distinguishing marks of a Christ centered friendship is the disarming openness that is not ruled by fear. A spiritual friendship exposes our attempts to control our lives as we enter into life-giving relationships with others. Through our openness to God and one another, God can free us from a life of fear and isolation and embraces us as His friends. We in turn, can offer a pouring out of the eternal into one another.

Nancy & I could not have known HOW the Lord would answer each of our prayers to find a friend that lived in Wheaton with whom we could really practice the "one anothers." God never runs out of surprises for His children, even though we sometimes have to ask, pray and wait for His answers for an indefinite period of time. The length of the wait in our prayer life often correlates with the depth of the satisfaction we enjoy when God supplies the answer to our prayers. Nancy & I met because our children, Drew & Emily, began dating in December of 2007. She invited me for a cup of coffee at Caribou after church one Sunday in March of 2008, and thus began a friendship that would grow as only God could have seen fit. Even though our children continued to date, they were not the basis of what drew us together......it was our shared love for Christ and a desire to discover whether or not "true community" was possible at a deeper level than either of us had presently been experiencing. I would be remiss to mention that our children eventually married on April 9th, 2011, and the bond that we already shared in Christ, has only deepened, as you might expect, at the human level. How fun to have best friends kids marry one another. I cannot even begin to describe the joy that is ours!!! Jesus has been so good to us.