C.S. Lewis, in The Four Loves, wrote: “… friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties in all the others.”
It’s an intriguing idea, to me, that the friendships that happen in our lives are not as self-selected as we might like to think and, in any case, are not coincidental. There have been some that I knew at the time they were strongest in my life that they were gifts from God, but even then I didn’t see them exactly as God’s instruments – tools God was using to work toward an end.
Lewis continues his theme: “… At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should preside.”
Here, every responsibility for the creation, continuation, constitution, and orchestration of the friendship is placed outside our own hands and directly into God’s. This makes me remember the times when I felt that I had to work to keep a relationship on an even keel – and I wonder whether my efforts only hindered things, or if that, too, was part of God’s administration.
Do you see a Divine hand in your friendships?
