If you’ve seen the movie The Sandlot, you’ll know something about my childhood. I grew up on a dead-end street filled with boys. We spent our summers riding our bikes to the local superette to buy Swedish Fish candies and then to my neighbor’s house for a game of backyard baseball.
Friendship came easily in those days.
It wasn’t much different in high school or college. It doesn’t take much to make a friend when you’re surrounded by people in close quarters who are on the same trajectory.
Even as I entered young adulthood and my wife and I started our family in Orlando, we made fast friends effortlessly. We found ourselves in a lovely neighborhood with other young families, all transplants from different parts of the Midwest. Each afternoon we would walk around the neighborhood pond with our toddling children, spotting the occasional alligator lurking in the water.
But now as a middle-aged man in the suburbs of Milwaukee, I’ve struggled to make friends. When we moved back to southeastern Wisconsin six years ago, I noticed a different spirit here. So many families seem to be trading the intimacy of relationships for the pursuit of excellence in their careers. When they’re not working long, hard hours, they’re carting their children to personal trainers so their children might make the most elite traveling teams.
My family has jumped into the rat race as well. At the church where I serve, I’ve found myself starting more programs and initiatives to further the ministries I lead, which creates more busyness for us all.
When I’m not at the office, I take on the role of the kids’ Uber driver. They are now all teenagers, and I feel like we’re behind the curve of our community’s expectations for athletics. We are trying our best to keep up.
My life has become an enormous investment into achievement, efficiency, and optimization, which are not bad things in themselves. Still, they often come at a significant cost: a meaningful connection with another human being.
All that being said, I’ve found myself feeling quite lonely. I don’t think I’ve consistently recognized this nagging feeling of boredom or mild depression as loneliness. But when I get a chance to reconnect with a few friends, I remember one of the oldest yet most relevant ideas in all of Scripture: “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).
As a result, friendship no longer seems automatic or intuitive; my wife and I have found it requires intentionality and devotion. Like with most things in our lives, we’ve decided we need to set goals and plans to experience true community.
So what does it take to make and keep a friend?
Friendship begins when at least two people share a common interest, activity, or journey. C. S. Lewis famously said, “Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one!’” (The Four Loves, 1960). And so, as we look to build new friendships, we are keeping an eye out for people with mutual pursuits.
Starting a friendship is one thing; sustaining a friendship requires trust and commitment. The book of Proverbs, which speaks a great deal about friendship, states: “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity” (Proverbs 17:17).
To keep a friendship, we must make sacrifices and show up when needed.
We might think of it like having a “friendship bank account,” looking for ways to make “deposits” that build trust and a deeper bond. Those deposits might mean making a phone call when a friend has a major milestone. And when they lose a loved one, going to the funeral.
Because, as humans, we struggle with our own selfishness, we ought to expect that we are going to let each other down. When that happens, we must rely on our Christian faith, which enables us to “be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). Our experience with Jesus leads us to show grace and forgiveness when there has been a rupture that needs repair.
Finally, although friendships may come and go with different stages of life, Jesus hints that our friendships have the potential to last into the life to come. After he tells the strange and surprising story of a shrewd manager, Jesus makes this application: “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:9). According to Jesus, our friends will someday be part of our welcoming committee as we enter into glory. That means that although we might not stay connected with every friend in this moment, we hope that, in Jesus, each friendship has the potential to be rekindled at the renewal of all things.
It’s worth the effort.
When Jesus came to the world to change the world, he didn’t write a book or start an organization; he developed a few important friendships. He committed himself to those friendships, and he even relied on them in his most challenging moments. If that is true about the sinless Son of God, what does that mean for us?
We must prioritize our relationships. I think that’s what Paul had in mind when he wrote, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6). In the end, the only thing that really matters is having a faith that manifests itself in its connection with others.
So perhaps one of the most meaningful things you can do right now is not add another task to your already full schedule but make room for an important relationship by giving it the best of your time, presence, and grace.
