Friendship is a Gift

All of us were created with an intrinsic desire to be in relationship with other human beings. We all need friends. We need people in our lives that will truly love us--friends that will celebrate with us, grieve with us, encourage us, guide us, and even confront us. We all need friends that will be there for us in life. This desire--and it is a good one--is met by the gift of friendship that God extends to us. Friendship is a gift given to us by God.

But that doesn't mean friendship is easy. We have a way of complicating relationships. Part of this complication occurs because of our expectations. We often expect too much of our friends. We expect our friends to provide for us more than they are able. And so when they fail to meet our expectations we feel let down. And this sense of being let down tends to make us critical. We begin to focus our attention on the limitations that prevented that person from meeting our needs. We focus our attention on their faults in a vain attempt to console the wounds that formed from the expectations we had that went unmet.

This way of complicating things fails to take into account that every friend has limitations and no one friend can meet all of our needs. No friend is perfect. No friend is without faults. And no one friend can meet all of our relational needs. Some friends may give us great guidance, others will know exactly how to encourage us, still others may know how to celebrate with us. Expecting a friend to check their limitations at the door or to have all that we need sets us up for failure.

One thing that will help us guard against unrealistic expectations in our friendships is by remembering that we too have limitations. We too are unable to meet all of our friends needs. Only the stubborn narcissist will suggest otherwise. But coming to terms with our own limitations and our own weaknesses will naturally produce a humility--a humility to receive what others can give us and a humility to give to others what we are in a position to give. It is in this context of mutual giving and mutual receiving that God's gift of friendship to us will be most fully experienced and appreciated with the utmost contentment.