Friendship

 Greetings to you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

     Matthew 11:19 says, “The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.”

     I recall one of my friends from school was George Hill, and his nickname was “Bunker.”  Hence he was known as “Bunker Hill.”  We were friends in grade school and all the way through high school and later on in life until he died a n number of years ago.  Every time I would pull into La Porte, Indiana, I would go to the car dealership where he was in charge of the parts department and spend some time talking over old times and even visiting him and his wife at their home.  He came to the funerals of both my Mom and Dad.  He was a close friend.  As life goes on you suddenly realize that you have some close friends, although few in number and a lot of not so close friends which you hope will become close friends but oftentimes don’t.  I have always enjoyed making new friends and also hate it when I lose a friend.  I recently had two people “unfriend” me on Facebook and it hurt a lot to be the truth, even on a simple thing like social media. Friendships are important.

     The above passage is interesting and challenging in that Christ was  considered to be a friend of publicans and sinners.  Of course He was.  Those are the people who need to hear the Gospel and probably the most likely to be affected by knowing the Savior.  It is so easy to become isolated in your church and Christ ian community by seminars, retreats, church meetings, fellowship dinners and such that we don’t have time for the sinners and the publicans of our day.  We might know our doctrine and the P’s and Q’s of Christianity very well and forget the message to the lost of the world.  They quite often don’t look like us, smell like us, behave like us and have the same goals that we do.  When I would go to a hospital to make a call and the room was a semi private room, I would always speak to the other person in the room and include them in my prayers.  It  was just a small thing to remind them that they were important to God also.  Your  light for  God may shine in church but it needs also to shine in the dark areas where there are no believers present such as with publicans and sinners.  We are in the world but not “of” the world.   We need to exhibit the Christian walk, or life, in the areas of darkness where there is no light present.  Praise God today for His sending His Son into the world to save sinners.