Even your best friends wish you’d get lost ...

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Wealth attracts friends as honey draws flies, but poor people are avoided like a plague. Lots of people flock around a generous person; everyone’s a friend to the philanthropist. When you’re down on your luck, even your family avoids you— yes, even your best friends wish you’d get lost. If they see you coming, they look the other way— out of sight, out of mind. -Proverbs 19:4,6-7 MSG

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These verses speak loudly to me about how relationships can be so superficial. Can you relate to the notion of fair-weather friends? I sometimes wonder if the people I once called friends were really friends at all or if they were just acquaintances that I once worked or attended church with. For sure some of them were friends but many of them were just acquaintances. What do you think is the difference is between these two types of relationships?

It seems that these verses show us that an acquaintance is someone who knows you at a somewhat superficial level - they are attracted to you because of the car you drive, the place you live, the church you attend or the job that you hold. In contrast, a true friendship begins in those places but goes to deeper levels as a shared situation progresses and the connection moves from the head to the heart as the sharing becomes vulnerable and transparent.

Dear Lord, we so need each other. Help us to drop our guard and transparently reveal our hearts to our friends.

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