Friends

2.Friends – true friends will sacrifice for you. And you for them Jesus is a true friend and his example of sacrifice is frankly incredible. In fact his death on the cross is the greatest act of friendship the world has ever seen. Jesus himself once said 13"Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. 14"You are My friends if you do what I command you.… and we read in the book of 1 Peter 2 verse 24 "He himself bore our sins" in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; "by his wounds you have been healed." Therefore we should see the same dynamics revealed in the lives of Christian sacrificial love for one another. The story is told of a mine worker in Ireland during the great potato famine of 1847. He brought his lunch each day to work; but he ate alone. Stealing away from his coworkers, he would then open his lunch pail.

The other workers burned with curiosity wondering why he was hiding his lunch. They assumed that he had some delicious morsels that he refused to share. Finally, they could stand the suspense no longer. Someone opened his lunch pail to find that it was full of potato peels. While his children were given the potatoes for their lunches, he took the peels.

His great sacrifice was actually assuring him that he would get most of the vitamins and minerals that are contained in the potato. Not understanding what science has revealed to us in recent years, this father was enriching himself–rather than his children–with his sacrificial giving.

Being friends with people means that you leave your mark on them and them on you. Sometimes we have the privilege of visiting other churches and one thing that I have noted is that the people of that church reflect having rubbed against one another in Christ. Sometimes it may be an emphasis on love and caring other times it might be an emphasis on evangelism or a number of things but the culture is infectious and you see it in the folk who attend that church.

Marjorie William’s children’s story book, The Velveteen Rabbit tells the story of a stuffed toy rabbit given to a young boy as a Christmas present. The velveteen rabbit lives in the nursery with all the other toys, waiting for the day when the boy will choose him as a playmate.

In time, the shy Rabbit befriends the tattered Skin Horse, the wisest resident of the nursery, who reveals the goal of all nursery toys: to be made “real” through the love of a human. One night we get to overhear their conversation..

‘What is REAL?’ asked the Rabbit one day, as they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, just before Nana came in to tidy up the room. ‘Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?’

‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’