FRIENDS

Following below is a poem I have turned to many times during my decades of ministry. I have always valued my friends and carefully collected them as valued gems, but since the departure of my beloved companion some three years ago, my passion for friends has taken a different turn. What quickly becomes obvious when you peruse my Facebook traffic, you will see many friends who look very different from this White Anglo-Saxon American Protestant. 

It all began when Olga responded to a blog I wrote a few years back; she wondered what I knew about the followers of D. S. Warner, the Patron Saint of our Faith Family. Olga grew up as part of a German settlement in Kazakhstan. In time, she became part of a Khazik colony migrating north and west seventeen hundred miles that homesteaded about three hundred miles west of Moscow, Russia, where they established a permanent Church of God Missionary Colony.

My involvement soon connected to other friends and began a slow trek that eventually took on a global shape. From the Ukraine it found its way to Northeast India and a tiny newer nation called Meghalaya,  across Asia, into the continent of Africa, and beyond. With time, it took on a global shape and the lyrics of "I'm so glad I'm a part of the Family of God ..." that Bill and Gloria Gaither had introduced at the 1980 World Conference of the Church of God meeting in Anderson, Indiana that year. What a celebration that was, attended by somewhere between thirty and forty thousand people.

Today is  Monday, the beginning of Christmas Week 2020, a year we will long remember as the year of the covid-19 pandemic; a year of tragedy and suffering and untold deaths. It was a year when Friends suddenly translated into meanings we had neglected far too long. We have experienced a full year of pandemic, during which we have reconsidered our friends and memorialized a host of deceased friends. It is with that thought in mind that I turn back to these simple poetic lines I have used so many times to celebrate the worth of friends joining together in acknowledging and sharing our humanity as a collective body in a meaningful way.

Christmas concludes 2020 by introducing 2021. For what it is worth; there may be no greater source of joy in God's scheme of things ... SO, let us join together and launch our New Year with a renewed sense of the worth of our ''FRIENDS''

The river flowing gently by,

          The rolling meadows green,

The mountains towering to the sky,

           The valleys in between,

Are all a part of God's great scheme,

           On which our joy depends,

But greatest of them all, I deem,

          Are friends.

The sunshine and blue skies are fine,

          I'm thankful for the flowers,

For they are truly gifts divine,

          To cheer this world of ours.

But flowers droop and skies turn gray

           And oft the sunshine ends,

God's  greatest blessings, so I say,

           Are friends.

When sorrow comes and grief is yours

          And hope is lost in gloom,

'Tis then that friendship comes to shine

          Within your darkened room.

'Tis then that consolation sweet

          Your bitter woe attends,

For God hath made this world complete

          With friends.

I glory in a summer's day,

          And in the morning sun,

But wh--Authen my cares are put away,

          And all my tasks are done,

When low the shades of evening fall

         And night time fast descends,

Most thankful then am I for all

          My friends. 

                                                             --Author Unknown

                                      IDEA KIT, Golden, CO (early 50s)