A friend, indeed.

"Strangers are just friends waiting to happen." ~Rod McKuen

Life is full of little surprises.  Making a new friend is always a treat for one's heart.  Sometimes, an instant connection pulls two beings together. Other times, new friendships may take extra work. But isn't friendship worth it?  How hard it would be to go through life without a friend!

"Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!" Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

A lifetime friend is a special blessing. Through the years, encouragement and strength become the ties that bind.  How sweet are memories shared through the long journey of life. Edith Wharton wrote: "There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul." God surely blesses friends who are faithful through the years.

"But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold." ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
                                              
Any friendship is a blessing, old or new.  Consider this: Jesus was your first friend.  Even better: He is always with you. He made your heart whole and lives in every breath you take. You are never alone. "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." John 15:15. Blessings to you, my friend.