May the mystery of God enfold us,
may the wisdom of God uphold us,
may the fragrance of God be around us,
may the brightness of God surround us,
may the wonder of God renew us,
may the loving of God flow through us,
may the peace of God deeply move us,
may the moving of God bring us peace.
Joy Cowley, Aotearoa, New Zealand as found in Geoffrey Duncan, compiler, A World of Blessing: Benedictions from every continent and many cultures (Norwich: Canterbury Press Norwich, 2000), p. 226.
Moving house can be so disconcerting on many levels, not least how it affects our friendships. Evelyn Wright shares what she learned through a recent move, and how God met her:
Friends change over the years. We have friends from our childhood, but often we lose touch and go our separate ways. Some friends stay just for a season of our lives, but others remain constant and firm friends.
Five years ago Peter and I moved from Glasgow to a little village called Glenluce, which means the valley of light. With God’s guidance we moved here, but I felt lost – all my friends were over 100 miles away. I joined too many local groups, which only exhausted rather than fulfilled me. I ask myself now, why did I do that? After all, my friends Aileen, Fiona and Maria didn’t disappear from my life; we’ve still had constant calls and meet-ups, with all three visiting me here. Only the distance miles-wise has changed; our friendships, love and care for each other has remained the same (or even deepened).
These friends are a constant in my life. They have supported me through difficult days, like being at my side at my mother’s funeral, not even knowing my mum but being there for me. Then sharing laughter and celebrating together at my twentieth wedding anniversary vows’ renewal and the births of both my granddaughters. I thank God for the blessings of friends and I pray that I can be as much a blessing to them as they are to me.
I thank God that he always provides, and now he has provided me with a very special friend who lives in this area. Funnily enough she came from Glasgow too and whilst there, lived a few streets away from me. Our paths may have crossed, we don’t know, but now they have and I have the blessing of a new friend called Hilary.
So no matter the distance our true friends remain a constant in our lives. Proverbs 17:17 says, ‘A friend loves at all times’. In John 13:34 Jesus says, “Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another”.
At times God can feel far away from us, but we can trust that he is always with us. It’s times like this when we need to pray or have our friends pray for us.
God is a constant in our lives – he never leaves us.
Evelyn Wright is a Christian, a wife to Peter, mum to three grownup children, a granny to two granddaughters, a sister and a friend. She leads the Aglow Prayer group and runs the church library with great enthusiasm. She’s also part of her church’s worship team and sings joyfully (though not always tunefully) with Gospelsound choir. And she was recently ordained as a Church Elder.
Explore friendship with Jesus in Transforming Love. Find it – including a free copy of the introduction and first chapter – here.
How would you like to join me and Nicholas on a trip to the Holy Land in February? We’ll have a knowledgable local guide, and I’ll be there fostering the spiritual experience, as I lead prayer practices and times of encounter with God. We’re keen that as we walk where Jesus walked, we also have time and space to encounter the Risen Christ.
You can find details on the McCabe Pilgrimages website – a full brochure along with the booking form. Nicholas and I went in January and had such an enriching and wonderful time. We would love to see you there!
The wilderness where Jesus went for 40 days and 40 nights.So moving to visit the Western Wall.Glorious spices and food!One of the gates to the Old City of Jerusalem.The view from the hotel room in Tiberias.We take a boat ride similar to this one on the Sea of Galilee.
What a thought-provoking post by Deborah Jenkins. I love her picture of a strong friendship that emerged over lockdown via the technology we have available today. Whatever season of life we’re in, we CAN cultivate new friendships! Read on and be encouraged:
Friendship is an art form and practice makes perfect. I went to a prestigious girls’ school where I didn’t fit in for lots of reasons, mostly to do with me, but I couldn’t get the ‘girl group’ thing. I hovered at the edge of friendships, fascinated but afraid. A youth club at the local church was my salvation – a safe place to practise making friends.
I realised it wasn’t a question of one best friend. We need different people to do different bits of life with – funny friends, shopping friends, praying friends, friends for D and Ms (‘Deep and Meaningfuls’). We can be those things for others too. It’s rare to find a friend who is all of them; rarer to be one.
We initially gathered around our PCs to meet the challenge of launching Fran’s first book in Lockdown. But as those hot, lonely weeks wore on, and the Covid crisis deepened, so did our friendship. We shared writing advice, books, parenting tips, life hacks. We still do, almost daily. Frustrations and joys are soothed and celebrated. We laugh a lot, and we pray – for our children, work, health. We send flowers on Publication Days, brownies for a boost.
Writing remains a key feature. We help with query letters, edit pitches, cheer successes, comfort failures. We buy each other’s books and share them on social media. In writing and in life, we are each other’s cheerleaders.
Someone said: Happiness is amazing. It’s so amazing, it doesn’t matter if it’s yours or not.
I would say this to my younger self: Don’t worry that you’re different; everyone is. Look for kindred spirits and find ways to make them happy. It will transform you. It will transform them too.
Deborah Jenkins is an author of fiction, textbooks and educational articles. Her debut novel, Braver was published in June 2022 by Fairlight Books and Winter Lights, a collection of seasonal short stories set in a small town, will be available in November 2023. She lives in Sussex with a Baptist Minister and a cat called Oliver. Deborah blogs at stillwonderinghere.net about life, hope and the crazy, incongruous things that shape us and make us who we are.
Explore friendship with Jesus in Transforming Love. Find it – including a free copy of the introduction and first chapter – here.
How fun is a giveaway! I so enjoyed last month’s, especially as the winners live in South Korea, Australia, the States, and the UK – I was amazed! May God go before the prayer cards and paintings I sent out last month.
So this month, three people will win either a copy of my new book, Transforming Love, a set of these amazing prayer cards designed by Our Daily Bread Publishing, or… some pure nard from the Holy Land!
Last week as I led a retreat at Penhurst Retreat Centre (I’ll include some glorious photos in my next newsletter) I included as a prayer practice anointing ourselves with nard as a way of receiving God’s love and care. Just as Mary poured out her love as she anointed Jesus with precious nard, so can we remind ourselves of Jesus lavishing his love out on us. I want to share this wonderful practice with one of you!
Just sign up to my newsletter if you don’t already receive it, and next week you’ll receive this monthly missive (in which I include a prayer practice for a mini-retreat), and you’ll read the simple instructions for how to enter the drawing (just replying to the email).
Please share this with others you think might be interested. Thank you!
Last week I lead a retreat on the content of my new book, Transforming Love, in the glorious setting of Penhurst Retreat Centre. See my Insta and Facebook pages for amazing photos that I took in and around that place. We had sunshine and long days, with so much time to explore and enjoy.
Too far to travel? I created several reels for shorter times of prayer, and I have the Penhurst prayer exercise playlist on my YouTube channel if you have time for a mini-retreat.
If you want to see when you might be able to book into your own experience there, here’s the link to the website.
What about friendships when you or the other person has a role, such as a church minister? Dave Faulkner explores this dynamic:
I moved into my first manse as a single minister, accompanied by second-hand furniture gifted by friends and a puppy from my parents.
On the first Sunday night, the doorbell rang, and there stood the local United Reformed Church minister who came to welcome me into the town. She brought two gifts. The first was a spray of flowers. (She didn’t know about my hay fever.) The second was of immeasurable value.
“Like you,” she said, “I’m single. I know how important it is to have friends and support. Would you like to join one of the home groups in my church?”
What an act of generosity – to trust another minister she didn’t yet know. (I promised her I would not comment on any issues in her church that came up in the group.)
Thirty years later, I am still friends with several members of that group. They have been among the closest friends I have ever had. Like family at times.
Some congregations are under the delusions that ministers don’t need friends. Of course we have to be careful about choosing who we get close to in our churches, and we cannot disclose confidences, but we still need friends. We too are human. “It is not good for the man to be alone” applies to us, too (see Gen. 2:18).
In subsequent appointments I’ve been glad to find other supportive groups and networks. Often they’ve been gatherings of other ministers, usually from outside my denomination. One group met monthly for fellowship. Another went on day retreats together. One local vicar became my prayer partner and his curate our next-door neighbour.
For a few years, I had no close friends in the area. It was a desert. Yes, my devotional life nourished my friendship with God. But God made us to have both friendship with him and – as a child once put it – “friends with skin on.”
After all, isn’t that what Jesus offered in the Incarnation?
Points to ponder: if you’re ordained, do you have these relationships or are you looking for them? If you’re a church member, do you care about your church leaders enough to check they are supported?
Dave Faulkner is a Methodist minister and the author of Odd One Out: Good news for those who feel they don’t belong.
Explore friendship with Jesus in Transforming Love. Find it – including a free copy of the introduction and first chapter – here.
A powerful window into the friend who sees, celebrates, and loves us for our true selves by a friend who sees me. You won’t want to miss this:
‘Friendship is magic’. That’s the tagline of the My Little Pony TV series, which ran from 2010 to 2019 and is beloved by my daughter and probably thousands of other autistic children. I wonder whether some of its appeal for them has to do with the central premise of friendship: six ponies, navigating the everyday difficulties of existing as a social group. From the fact that each of the central characters represents an element of friendship such as generosity, honesty or fun, to the simple conflicts and resolutions of each episode, the show seems to offer itself as a series of social stories, containing the ingredients of forming and keeping successful friendships.
Autistic people – especially girls – often learn to mask and script at an early age, changing behaviour that comes naturally to them in an attempt to fit in with their neurotypical peers. It can be a disheartening mystery to them that they are still so often not accepted: and even when they are, it’s for the person they are so diligently role-playing, not for their true autistic selves.
Neurodiverse friendships don’t always look like typical ones. At school, I used to ‘fall in friendship’ like falling in love: I knew within the first five minutes that this was one of those rare and magical people who ‘got’ me, and that we were going to be friends. The idea of needing to work at forming a friendship, or of having a large group of friends, baffled me. Friendship, for me, was a scarce and beautiful thing that couldn’t be sought or created: it just happened.
As an adult I have plenty of friends, and a slightly better grasp on the idea that I need to put them into my diary if I ever want to see them (though I’m terrible at actually doing so). But I still feel uncomfortable with the idea that friendship has ‘rules’. Those few precious friends have remained my closest and best. So my wish for my daughter is not just that she has friends, but that she finds her people, the ones with whom she can have a friendship as her authentic self.
I’m always struck by how individually Jesus treated his friends. Literal-minded Thomas was shown tangible proof while Peter was given a stern talking to. Clever, busy Martha was called to faith in action, while quiet Mary was loved with a gentle presence. We should never fall into the trap of thinking there’s only one way to have friends, because unconventional friendships are a blessing and a balm. They’re where the magic lies.
Amy Scott Robinson is the author of Image of the Invisible and Images of Grace for BRF, as well as several children’s books. She works on the editorial team at Kevin Mayhew, and lives in Suffolk with her vicar husband and two children.
Explore friendship with Jesus in Transforming Love. Find it – including a free copy of the introduction and first chapter – here.
A prayer to deepen our friendship with Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, who takes us to the Father, by Augustine of Hippo:
Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy. Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy. Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy. Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy. Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy.
Wise and winsome words from Keren on deep friendship. Much to ponder and celebrate:
Bev and I sat and held hands. There was so much to say that we didn’t even try. Silence said it better, and of course she was wary of tiring me. Here she was at last, my anam cara, soul friend, sitting right next to me. Normally, she would be several thousand miles away in Vancouver, me here in the UK. We met on the internet, which can be a wonderful place – I met my husband there too. On that memorable day a few years ago, she came visiting, she and her family having made a stopover especially.
That’s the thing about best friends, or your beloved, they know and love you without you having to do or say anything much. They recognise something in you that speaks to their heart. They understand your sense of humour. Two signs of a great friendship or relationship are that you can sit in a comfortable silence and still commune, and that you don’t have to explain the joke.
God is like that too. Who knows us better than the one who made us? A fellow Christian once asked me who my best friend was. Without hesitation, I said, “God.”
He frowned, “Oh. Most people would say Jesus.”
I felt I was being corrected. I’ve always prayed to God the Father through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. I see them as One. And though it’s true that they are, it’s easier, perhaps, to relate to Jesus, the human extension of God into his own creation. We can imagine those eyes smiling at us, like Bev’s eyes sparkled at me that precious day.
We know the stories so well, we feel it might be us sitting in the boat or breaking bread with this person who knows us completely. The one who knew everything the Samaritan woman ever did, or read Nathaniel’s heart so thoroughly he saw there was no guile in it.
Jesus knows us too. He will always travel the distance, be comfortable with us, look us in the eyes, and always, always get the joke.
Keren Dibbens-Wyatt is a chronically ill Christian contemplative, writer and artist. She has a passion for prayer, poetry, story and colour. Her writing features regularly in literary journals and anthologies (Fathom, Amethyst Review, The Blue Nib, Linen Press, Orchard Lea Press), and on spiritual blogs (The Redbud Post, Contemplative Light, Godspace). She is the author of the books Recital of Love (Paraclete Press, 2020) and Young Bloody Mary (Mogzilla Books, 2023). Keren lives in South-East England and suffers from M.E., which keeps her housebound and out of the trouble she would doubtless get into otherwise.
Explore friendship with Jesus in Transforming Love. Find it – including a free copy of the introduction and first chapter – here.
