Still Fresh and Healing Today January 12, 2015 Issue

In this column, readers get a new look at a few of the many articles on JSH-Online.com that have particular relevance to contemporary needs.

The spirit of friendliness

Marion D. MacCann

Reprinted from the March 4, 1944, Sentinel.

This world that we see captioned and caricatured as sad or old or decrepit is in dire need of friendship. From far shores, from cities, from desert places, echoes the need of a friendly world. Where can the peoples of the earth turn for friendship?

Abraham sought this answer even as we do, and he found it in God. Abraham believed in God. He understood Him to be his Friend. He trusted Him. And through obedience to the divine law, Abraham came to be called the friend of God (Isaiah 41:8; James 2:23). He expressed friendship in his generous arrangement with Lot. When the land was not able to provide for them both because of the number of their cattle, he said, “If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left.” His thoughts were not clouded with suspicion of Lot’s good faith, nor was he fearful of personal loss. He presented no artificial excuse of time, usage, precedent, or seniority to tip the scale toward his own preferment. He stood to share equally, freely. He trusted God to care for them both. He freed Lot to work out his own salvation. He was his friend.

Moses was assigned a heavy, complicated task, and he undertook it with the assurance that God would befriend him. He carried out a strategic withdrawal from Egypt of all the people of Israel. He eluded recapture by the pursuing forces of Pharaoh; he avoided wars and won wars; he beheld the provision of food and water for the multitude. The gravest difficulties and discouragements that confronted him lay in the attitude of the people themselves. They forgot their earlier sufferings. They became indifferent towards the goal before them. They rebelled at the effort necessary to attain it.

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