Look Who's Coming to Dinner

So as a special treat last night, I got to have dinner with Otis. He had some business to conduct not far from here and so made the drive up last night to visit me in New Home. We engaged in one of the modes of food (BBQ) that New Home is known for, and chatted the evening away.

It provokes a moment of reflection for me. I've known Otis something like 8 years now, when I first met him through the church we were both attending at the time and he was having a men's study in his home. It makes me reflect because you never know where friendships are going to blossom - I cannot think of anything directly that would make the think that the friendship I have with him is what it is today. It was an easing in, rather than a sudden realization of "Hey, this is someone that I can build a real relationship with, and have it grow even stronger even though we are states away from each other."

This is in contrast to those friendships where you try to make them happen because of some reason - the person is significant in some way that is meaningful to you, you seem to share a common interest, or there is something about the person that makes you want to be associated with them. So often, those do not end up working because they are built on some goal to the relationship rather than the relationship itself.

It's actually a lot like dating and marriage - we date those who we think have something that is attractive to us be it looks, money, or interests, but those marriages that last end up being built on the relationship with our spouse, rather than the things that the relationship has or can offer of itself - because all too often, those things can go away and all you are left with is the relationship. Woe betide the weak relationship built only on things.

And actually (if you carry it that far) it's like our relationship with God: so often we desire God for what He can do for us, rather than the relationship that we can have with Him. And so often, people fall away from God because the things suddenly do not appear (the great and dangerous Achilles heel of the "Health and Wealth" gospel) and interpret that as God not loving them rather than realizing that God loves us through those situations and that it is our relationship with Him is paramount, not what we get from Him.

Powerful stuff indeed. I should have Otis out for dinner more often.