Prophetic Friendship: Friends as Sacraments

Both last week and the week before, I presented Thursdays as a day to share some of the best writings about friendship I’ve encountered.

For the first few weeks, I’m sharing stand out quotes about friendship from Sacrament as Friendship. Here are a few more of my favorites.

We should stop speaking so much of believing in ideas, institutions, and things–and start speaking about our belief in one another and in the friendships we share and the God who animates, sustains, and dwells within them…Through them we come to realize more profoundly that God is present here and now and that he continues to love us.

There are still prophets today…individuals with whom we personally interact, whose obvious intimacy with God serves to instill in us a hope that, like them, we too can heed God’s call and follow him to undreamed-of places. When we meet a person of radical hope who trusted God’s promises even when they were unclear and led to pain and confusion, we are somehow given new courage in following God’s plan for us personally. …As prophets to one another, we are called to speak words that do not go from lips to ears but from heart to heart. Basically, the prophets of old and our own personal prophets today announce the Good News in this ongoing sharing of grace…We know that the resurrection has happened and that Christ lives today because we have met him in our prophets.

[Tweet “True friendship’s a mystery. It captures us. We don’t analyze it, but live w/in it.”] [Tweet “We can be for one another an experience of God. God has given us the ability to mirror him.”] [Tweet “Our friendships are a school of love where we learn to relate in love to one another.”]

If you enjoy these, I hope you’ll also check out what’s going on here the other days of the week: cultural observations about community and connectedness (Mondays), research about friendship (Tuesdays), a look at how relationship is woven through the Bible (Wednesday), and things people are currently writing that prompt a more compassionate and connected world (Friday).

Photo source: girls