I was with a friend the other day who is going through a very hard time. The conversation turned to how, in difficult times, you see who your true friends really are. I had a situation not long ago where I had a similar experience and I was blessed to see that most of those I believed were my friends truly were. Solomon writes about the friend who is closer than a relative after having witnessed one of history’s greatest of all-time friendships. His father, David, and David’s best friend, Jonathan, modeled a friendship that would stay true even to death. I recently saw a statistic that said during the isolation connected to the virus stay-at-home order and job losses, suicides are expected to be as high as 77,000. That is as frightening as the deaths related to the virus, itself. Many people are learning, the hard way, that no matter how many Facebook “friends” they have, they are very alone. Add to that the loss of hope, an empty marriage, and challenging kids and a person can find themselves sad, lonely, depressed, and hopeless. God built us to need David and Jonathan type friendships and especially to be that type of friend. Today is a good time to reach out to someone who needs to know you are thinking about them and that they are essential to this planet. #BeTheEdge
