The Beatles sang it in 1967: I get by with a little help from my friends. That’s not exactly a hymn, but the feelings it expresses are nonetheless central to the faith. We need one another. We need friends. For many of us, belonging to a church is deeply interwoven with our sense of belonging to a network of people who care about us and about whom we care.
Fidelity in relationships requires the effort to love as God loves, with that same abiding strength and certainty and willingness to see one another’s strengths, not stupidities.
Such relationships depend on practices such as telling stories and listening to them sacramentally. All of us get by with the help of our friends because all of us need somebody to love.
This message was adapted from “Friendship, for Better or Worse” written by Catherine Wallace that first appeared in the March 2006 issue of Lutheran Woman Today (now Gather) magazine.
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