A lesson in stewardship:

The things I had allowed my friends to watch over as stewards, I think, began to be thought of as theirs alone. The very things that I bought or created and specifically entrusted to them as stewards (or did not specify at all) were the things that threw my friends in an uproar when I took them away. For a moment, I was taken aback by their strong response. I did not take what was not mine. I did not deface anything they owned. I simply took what was very much in my right to take, and so with a puzzled look on my face and a disbelieving "what??" in my breath, I didn't quite understand how any such indignation was merited. And yet I'm well acquainted with this embarrassing scenario, because it is the way all our sin-natures are, including my own, toward the things God has entrusted us to be but stewards. We believe that what we have is ours for our own possession. But from the beginning, that right never belonged to us, for "what do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?" He is the One who created and He is the One who gave; the right to take back what was already His creation and His possession always remained with Him.||

I do not profess that I have profound wisdom, but if the LORD is speaking, let me hear and carefully consider:

To date, on three separate occasions, and from three different people, I have heard the distress and tension of a vexxing question: "How can I remain friends with another person when there is a reminder of searing pain whenever there is contact with that person?"

Another question offers me further clarification: What is a friend? Aside from the many whose answers to this question will vary greatly, there is an answer that I believe God reveals in His word accounting the night of Jesus' betrayal.

One thing that I found peculiar was that Jesus, at the moment he was betrayed, called Judas His friend. Did I read that correctly—Judas was Jesus' friend?? How can that be so? How can it be that the he who was one of the causes of Jesus' pain and suffering be called His friend? Any so-called friend who would maliciously cause me pain, or betray me, especially over to death, is no friend of mine—at least that's what the mean, median, and mode of the populus has taught me.

And that's where Jesus' light illumined this mind of mine that was once dark. Mere minutes after sweating drops of blood while crying out to the almighty Father, mere seconds before He was handed over, Jesus, staring at the face of him whom He walked with, talked with, and knew intimately—His betrayer—called him "friend." My Lord's shown me that a friend is not the one who has my best interests in mind, but the one whom I have his or her best interests in mind; a friend is not someone who loves me, but someone whom I love. Judas did not have Jesus' best interest in mind, but Jesus had his in mind. It's a reiteration of what was said earlier regarding the love that God continues to teach me: That a friend is the one whom I have resolved in my will to pursue and desire that what God desires would be experienced and established in the life of my neighbor, whoever that may be. That ultimately, and most thankfully, this pure love is not borne out of my affections (which indefinitely fades) or my emotions (which fluctuate), but the resolve of the Holy Spirit in me to will that which God desires in the life of another.

This being said, I acknowledge that it is literally impossible for anyone to do—to fulfill this high and lofty desire of God's. But with time, time after time, through varying degrees of frustration, anger, and hurt, He has shown me that by the power of the Holy Spirit, this impossible ideal is lived through me again and again soley because He is a God who is the God of all things, possible and impossible.

While John, Jude, Peter, & Paul endear the breathren as "dear friends," it's shown me that, though there may be varying degrees of closeness in friends, the lowest-common-denominator truth is that a friend is a friend not because of my affections or emotions, but because of what I have willed for their lives. There may be friends who I may enjoy closeness with until "death do us part." There may be friends who, over the course of life, I may share seasons of closeness and seasons of distance with. There may also be friends who, due to the necessity of differing paths and priorities, I may only experience distance with, even after a brief season of closeness. So whether close or distant, the one unchanging thread is that they remain friends—individuals in my life whom I continue to resolve that God's best interests would be accomplished in their lives—a thoroughly impossible feat if not for the Spirit working and willing it in my life.

" 'Simon, I have something to say to you...A moneylender had two debtors: one owed five hundred denarrii, and the other fifty. When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. So which of them will love him more?' Simon answered and said, 'I suppose the one whom he forgave more'...and Jesus said to him, 'You have judged correctly.' "

"This is love for God: to obey His commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world."

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

For me, it's an awesome path to peace and freedom that begins with the Lord helping me to recognize and grasp the magnitude of the abominable wretchedness in myself that I've been forgiven. In turn, I love God more, which translates into obeying His commands, which results in loving Him with all that I am, and loving others—that is, desiring for God's noble purposes to be accomplished in the lives of my friends, first and foremost because I desire what He desires, apart from my own affections.

I do not pretend to be able to fully grasp the pain that some have endured; however, my sincere appreciation for the complexity of relationships wrought with pain and/or confusion is not feigned. If God's voice of wisdom is present at all in this entry, it's my prayer that my friends, my dear friends, who hear His Spirit speaking would be greatly edified in Christ.