okay, while i'm actually thinking about something...
tonight, i was trying to sit down and study and i was just having a really tough time of it. i couldn't just sit down and focus. i sat down in a room all by myself and all of a sudden i wanted, even needed people around. i tried sitting in the library where there were a couple of people that i knew, but not really friends exactly...still couldn't study and i found myself getting kind of emotional, for reasons i cannot explain. so i went and sat in the hall and tried to calm myself down and get ready to focus. instead i ended up crying for a little bit. not like sobbing or anything, but just kind of tears of frustration, i guess, probably a little bit of self-pity mixed in there. i tried to pray about it, my again i was having problems focusing and i'll admit at the time it probably didn't feel like God could help. at the moment all i really wanted was a big hug and somebody to tell me it was all right. once i finally did get around some people and some conversation etc. i was fine. i don't get it. sometimes i have a hard time balancing the idea that God can, and should be everything for us and having real emotional and relational needs that sometimes it feels like can only be met by people around us.
i keep finding that i really need people. i need them for my mental and emotional stability. i need them to hang out with, to laugh with, to listen to, to make me feel significant on this earth. but should i? is that me not being fully dependent on God? or is that me being a very human human being? Jesus was tempted in every way that we were...He had close friends...but did He need them? could He have "made it" without them? were they just there to be there, or were they actually necessary for His life here on earth?
2 comments:
I think that Jesus didnt need friends. It was His friends that needed a friend. I've thought about this alot too, that well we should be ok being alone as long as we depend on God. Maybe that is true, but I think it is being a very human human. We are relational creatures by nature, and we crave the attention, feelings, emotion, and love drawn from those relationships. Yes, sometimes all we have is God, and He should be enough. I think this is the ultimate secret to happiness. I mean if someone could be fulfilled completely 100% all the time by relying on God then how could anything bad ever happen? That doesn't mean we should avoid friends and rely on God...actually we are relyin on God when we get that stuff from our friends..who but God places our friends in our lives?
Yeah, I'm tending to think that Jesus didn't need friends. He went through the hardest bit of his passion without any friends, and he seemed to do reasonably well for himself.
But we ain't him, so I'm thinking that other people, friends, are generally important things.
However, I do think that one needs to make a careful distinction. While friends certainly are good, useful, and important, the primary reason to have them is so that one can have a forum in which to lay down one's life. Christ came, not to be served, but to serve, and we certainly ought to do no less. Not that you said that, but it's important to be intentional with relationships. That's my two bits for you.
-Don Giovanni di Marco
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