Be a Friend –Find Community

Thursday, November 1st, 2018     by Debra DuPree Williams     Start the Conversation

For the past two weeks, I’ve written about Soulful Ink, a Facebook group, open to anyone who feels they need rest from all that comes at us in this old world. I love that group.

I’m not going to talk about that group per se, today, but I want to encourage you to find a group like this in your community. You don’t have to be particularly talented. You don’t even have to do the artsy, creative things. Just be there for one another. Pray for one another. Support one another in the day to day things of life. (1Thessalonians 5:11)

I think most of us would agree that we have decent, if not blessed, day to day lives. But everyone has had or will have those days when we just want to walk away from everything, throw up our hands and shout, Uncle. Those are the days on which we really need to support one another.

Most, if not all, of us know the twenty-third Psalm. This just reminded me of the line Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.
God is Right Beside Us

Think about that. God is walking through even our darkest hour with us, so you know He’s there in the day to day. He’s there when you forget to put your coffee cup beneath the spout of your Keurig. He’s there when you break your just-manicured fingernail. He’s there when your little one wakes you in the middle of the night for the umpteenth time in a row proclaiming he’s had a bad dream. (Don’t fret about this one. When he’s a grown man, one day he will reveal to you that he woke up and missed you and just wanted to be with you. Warmed this mother’s heart, I can tell you!) He’s there when you get one of those dreaded phone calls in the middle of the night.

And as the Psalm says, He’s with us as we walk through the valley of death. What a wonderful promise. As we make that final journey, He’s right there beside us, holding our hand, leading us home.

But even though God is right there with us, we still need a good support system. He created us to need one another. Go find someone who needs a friend. All of my long-time friends are far away. We’ve just moved to a new town, new neighborhood, and I really don’t know anyone here. I don’t get out much, and we haven’t found a church home as yet. All of these are reasons why my Soul Care group is so important to me. And we only meet via video on Facebook. But it’s still community. We share a common bond in that most of us are writers and we all love Jesus.
Be A Friend

If you could hear all the songs running through my mind right now, you’d be saying, “Wow! That lady really needs a nearby friend.” Well, yes, I do—but so do you. Everyone does. We all need community. So, reach out to someone this week. You never know what someone may have gone through in recent days. They may have had a Keurig or a fingernail kind of day. Maybe they got that phone call. You could be the very friend they need.

Do you need, or want to be, a friend? Reach out to someone this week and then share with us how things went.
TWEETABLE

PS Those songs were, “You’ve Got a Friend”, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, “Won’t You be My Neighbor?”, “Oh, Lonesome Me”.

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