relationships and community on Friends

True friends face in the same direction, toward common projects, interests, goals.

Friends are individuals who are relational assets and not liabilities. Friends are those whom God escorts into our environments because there is something they need to be for us in order to help us be...

Selfless love is always costly. Fear can’t afford it, pride doesn’t understand it, but friends never forget it.

Every day God patiently bears with us, and every day we are tempted to become impatient with our friends, neighbors, and loved ones. And our faults and failures before God are so much more serious tha...

O Lord, We marvel that you would take on flesh and blood in order to be crucified, killed, and buried for us. You humbled yourself and submitted to the hatred of sinful men, accepting the thorns, the ...

Go now, trusting your way to the Lord Refrain from anger and forsake wrath Do not fret because of wickedness and evil But delight in the Lord Carrying Christ’s love to all who you meet Friends and ene...

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery ...

Lord our Lord – How majestic is Your name in all the earth. The sun’s light is but a dim flicker next to the brightness of Your glory. Your care is far more intimate than that of a mother sparrow hove...

One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.

Ralph Waldo Emerson describes a true friend as a person with whom I can think aloud. This absence of the need to put on a façade is an essential and foundational aspect of all genuine friendships. He ...

Everything significant starts with relationship. At the end of the day, your faith, your family, your work, and your leadership are all based on who you relate to and how you relate. Your life is moti...

It was impossible for me (Doug) to become Mark’s friend. He always avoided eye contact with me though I would smile and say hi as I passed him in the dorm. I had no idea what was going on in his heart...

Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are

Risen Lord, Loving Father ... and Ever-Present Spirit: Thank You for reaching into our doubts, giving us the faith we lack. Thank You for Your gracious condescension reaching from the glories of heave...

Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.

[Friends are] God’s apology for relations.

It’s been said home is the place where they have to let you in. While it’s a reach to say I’m friends with each of my family members, our relationships thrive because we share a mutual, understood res...

In each of my friends, there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

There’s been a lot of talk about friendship because of Facebook and the internet. You can collect friends and “likes” and begin to feel pretty good about yourself, depending on how many you accumulate...

In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of a...

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbor.

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world bu...

My friends tell me I have an intimacy problem, but they don’t really know me.

Nature teaches us to love our friends, but religion our enemies.

With my friends, it’s either no conversation or conversation about what’s going on, on your phone.

For in order that man may do well, whether in the works of the active life, or in those of the contemplative life, he needs the fellowship of friends.

Friend. We use that word too loosely. Too flippantly. We use it too generously. And most damaging of all, we give the title to people who haven’t earned it. I recognize that using the word earn makes ...

When we moved up here to this neck of the woods and settled in on our farm, there was an old farmer who lived to the west of us and his older brother who lived to the east, and this is what we were to...

Though Jim was just a little older than Phillip and often assumed the role of leader, they did everything together. They even went to high school and college together. After college they decided to jo...