Editorial April 17, 2017 Issue

The perfect friendship

Kim Crooks Korinek

Have you ever thought of God as your best friend? A couple of hymns in the Christian Science Hymnal refer to God as “my best, my ever Friend” and “the perfect Friend.” These hymns help us relate to God as not only infinite, but also as pure and tender. And it is the attentive and exacting care of divine Love—that fully and unconditionally loves, accepts, and knows us—that makes this way of knowing God as our “perfect Friend” perfectly natural!

In the Old and New Testaments, we’re encouraged to look again at “what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us” (I John 3:1). In Jeremiah, we read that God loves us with an everlasting love, drawing us with lovingkindness (see 31:3). Jesus called God “Abba”—a child’s word used as an endearing term for a father. Some Bible scholars put forth that the warm, intimate Aramaic word Abba was the word Jesus actually used in all his references to God. In Matthew 10:30 Jesus adds that even the very hairs on our head are numbered.

In this divinely natural friendship with God, we are on holy ground and have a safe place, a sacred trust that can never be severed. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science and founded this magazine, wrote, “There are no greater miracles known to earth than perfection and an unbroken friendship” (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 80). Our perfect and unbroken friendship with God becomes the basis for understanding the spiritual nature of all true friendships. The timeless and true nature of our friendship with God also becomes the basis from which we can find healing and hope in all our human relationships.

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Bible Lens—April 17–23, 2017