Being A Friend

There are no deep insights into Scripture in this post. Just something that I need to get off my chest.

If you are a woman, you more than likely enjoy having friends. In fact, I think it is pretty safe to say that most ordinary women find friendship to be quite necessary, and will suffer if they find themselves lonely and isolated.

Christian women should never find themselves isolated and lonely. If they do, then the church is failing. Christian women should be the most welcoming, friendly, hospitable, outward reaching women in the community. We should be getting together and sharing deep, unusual friendships with each other so often that all of our non-Christian friends are jealous.

Unfortunately, I think the scenario I described above is rare. Perhaps you find yourself surrounded by a wonderful community of Christian sisters. Praise the Lord if that is the case. You may not realize how blessed you are.

I happen to live in a smallish town in the Bible Belt of America. There are literally churches on almost every corner in the town I live in. You would think that a young Christian woman moving here would find no lack of young Christian women eager to reach out and fold her into fellowship with them. But over and over again I hear differently. I hear of women who go to church and nobody asks them what their name is. I hear of women who have lived here for a year, all the while going to church, and have yet to be invited over to share a meal in another church member's home.

Shame on us.

I am forced to imagine that women who have lived in the same town for their entire life, and are surrounded by the friends they grew up with, have no idea what it feels like to need a friend. They have no idea what it means to be new in town and to feel lost and lonely, to go to church hoping to find friendships and companionship and leave every week feeling dejected and rejected. To listen to the women around them in Sunday School talk about parties and dinners together and wonder why nobody thought to include the new girl.

Shame. Shame. Shame.

Christian woman, let me tell you something. You might be the one who needs to extend yourself and reach out to that new face in town. It is going to cost you something. It is going to cost time and effort and emotional energy. You are going to have to risk being rejected. You are going to have to give up time with the people you already know and love, or perhaps put up with having an unfamiliar personality at your next gathering. It is going to cost you. But you MUST be willing to pay the price. It is an affront to the idea of Christian hospitality for you to leave people out and ignore them.

Or, you might be that new person in town who wonders why the Christians around you aren't acting like they ought. You, too, are going to have to reach out. It is almost certainly going to cost you something. You might very well be rejected by women who don't even understand how callous and uncaring they are being. You are going to have to feel your way through unfamiliar group dynamics and go to the effort of getting to know someone new. But you need other Christian women in your life, and the other women might not realize it yet, but they will be enriched by you too.

The town I live in happens to be the home of an Air Force base. And I've had the privilege of meeting and loving several women who are Air Force wives over the years. It is a story that always has a bitter sweet ending. All of them move away eventually and leave me with a little hole in my heart. But I am richer and wiser and fuller for having taken the time to develop friendships with them. And more than once they have expressed to me how glad they are that a 'local' woman was willing to take the risk of loving them. Because all too often, it doesn't happen.

That is a shame and a pity.

I think all of us women are tempted to sit at home and wonder why nobody calls us up and asks us to do something. It is easy to be lonely and feel sorry for yourself and how 'left out' you are. There is an simple solution to that kind of problem. Quit wishing for friends. Instead, be a friend. Be willing to make that phone call and extend the invitation. Be willing to let people into your home and show them that you might not be perfect. Take the chance, risk the rejection, and push the envelope. Be a friend. Because someone out there is feeling just as isolated and lonely as you are.

And that should never happen to a Christian woman.