“For you are God, O Sovereign Lord. Your words are truth, and you have promised these good things to your servant. And now, may it please you to bless the house of your servant, so that it may continue forever before you. For you have spoken, and when you grant a blessing to your servant, O Sovereign Lord, it is an eternal blessing!” – 2 Samuel 7:28-29

We need to mark this down. Time and place: January 20 at the new(ish) Saint Patrick Street house. The first party – spontaneous and unofficial – at the new MaulHall. Granted, we don’t own the place yet. Also the work is not nearly finished. Plus we have yet to close on the sale of our house in Wake Forest.

Still – and because we very much feel that we needed this – Rebekah and I took a Trader Joe’s bag full of goodies over to St. Patrick Street and a few of our friends met us there for an impromptu gathering.

Also, providentially, Eddie had just completed attaching the new front door hardware. So now I have a key.

So the “improbable” and the “unlikely” is moving squarely into the realm of the “possibly almost there”. And we will absolutely take that.

Friends are good for us. I know that sounds like a no-brainer but it is remarkable how often we as human beings forget that we are created – all of humankind, from the very outset – with the idea of community in mind.

Community with God, joining in the fellowship of the Creator, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Community in the Church, as an extension of the joyful circle of care and accountability within the Godhead. Community with one another in friendship, both in and beyond the church. Community in terms of family.

The single most significant health challenge in America right now is the opposite of community; we are in a crisis of disassociation and of loneliness, and most specially in young men. Distance from the human family can easily lead to distance from self. Friendships quite literally save us.

I fell richly blessed to be able to say I not only have a wide circle of friends, but that there are many – very many – close enough that I know I can (and sometimes do) freely share my heart on a deep and intimate level.

I need friends; I need community; I need The Church.

Fact is, we all do. – DEREK