Time for Friendship?

            I like to write my first drafts on paper and then transfer to the computer, but lately I have found I can save more time if I just do the first draft on the computer.  Anything I can do to save time.  I want to save time and I look for time and sometimes I try to buy time but that doesn’t make time and pretty soon I am out of time.  I have come to the conclusion that I need to take my time and do what I have time to do in a timely fashion and stop doing things that are a waste of time (i.e. Facebook). 

I deactivated my Facebook account almost a year ago.  I gave it up mostly because it was causing me to sin.  Mark 9:43 says, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.  It is better for you to enter into life maimed rather than having two hands to go to hell into the fire that shall never be quenched.”  I’m not saying Facebook is sinful to everyone, that’s between them and God. 

At first I thought wow, look at all my friends … look at all the people that are befriending me.  I didn’t know I had so many friends. After awhile I became a nosey little busy body wondering what everyone else was doing.  Snooping was taking up way too much of my time and it was causing me stress.  Once I deactivated the account I waited to see how many of all those friends I had would contact me.  It was a sad shocker to realize I didn’t have as many friends as I thought I had.

True friendships are not found on Facebook.  They are not found at the workplace or at school.  How many people do you call your friend on Facebook, in the workplace or at school can you call at 3AM and get this response: “I’ll be right there”?  A sad truth we find now is churches try to lead people to believe that small group is the answer.  They try to create first century community in a twenty-first century society.  It doesn’t work.  You cannot put people together and expect them to jive.   We were in a small group once.  Actually we were in a couple of small groups.  Take a guess at how many people from those small groups contact us now.  The gloomy fact is if you are not right in someone’s face, being valuable to them, you are not important.

Society has become so self-centered and narcissistic they confuse friendly people with friendship.  The Facebook community gives a false sense of “friendship security” because people tend to applaud each others endeavors, making them feel important.  People in general are lonely.  God made us that way so that we would need each other. Pretty soon the secret will be out: Facebook is not the cure all for loneliness. 

True friendships take time.  One must be disciplined with the time we are given. I read somewhere once that disciplined people have much more time than do undisciplined people.  God has given each one of us a certain amount of time.  One true friendship that has been nourished by time is worth more than a handful of friendly acquaintances.    Ephesians 5:15-16 “See then that you walk cautiously not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”

© Crackerberries 2011