Category: FRIENDSHIP

  • Perhaps you spend too little time in communion with God through His Word.—It is not necessary to make long prayers, but it is essential to be much alone with God; waiting at His door; hearkening for His voice; lingering in the garden of Scripture for the coming of the Lord God in the dawn or cool of the day. No number of meetings, no fellowship with Christian friends, no amount of Christian activity can compensate for the neglect of the still hour.


    When you feel the least inclined for it, there is most need to make for your closet with the shut door. Do for duty’s sake what you cannot do as a pleasure, and you will find it become delightful. You can better thrive without nourishment than become happy or strong in Christian life without fellowship with God.

    The Gift of Suffering
    by F.B. Meyer

  • If you are constantly canceling plans with your friends, not following through, neglecting to answer messages for days and weeks on end, ignoring invitations, and not showing up for people at very important moments in their lives — that’s not introversion, that’s isolation.

    The Difference Between Being an Introvert and Isolating Yourself

  • The woman should not cause offense with her beauty and femininity, nor the man with his temptations, emotions, and promises, or through extending friendship and familiarity. These usually start innocent, in fact or in appearance, then end the opposite way.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Fruits of the Spirit

  • Even in the case of best friends, one should be sensitive regarding continuously visiting and intruding. It is an easy thing to wear out one’s welcome. If one does not respect their neighbors in space, the neighbor may become weary and eventually come to hate them.

    Frequently people who wear the best of friends become the bitterest enemies because of neglect of so simple a scripture as this.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef

  • Why, we have known ascetics of this class who have persisted in their fasting even unto death, as if with such sacrifices God were well pleased Hebrews 13:16; and, again, others who rush off into the extreme diametrically opposite, practising celibacy in name only and leading a life in no way different from the secular; for they not only indulge in the pleasures of the table, but are openly known to have a woman in their houses; and they call such a friendship a brotherly affection, as if, forsooth, they could veil their own thought, which is inclined to evil, under a sacred term. It is owing to them that this pure and holy profession of virginity is blasphemed among the Gentiles. 

    —St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, Chap. 23

  • We want something from Him, not Him at all. Is that a relationship? Do we behave in that way with our friends? Do we aim at what friendship can give us or is it the friend whom we love?

    —Met. Anthony Bloom, Beginning To Pray

  • Such persons are so caught up in God’s love that everything else can only receive its meaning and purpose in the context of that love. They ask only one question: “What is pleasing to the Spirit of God?” And as soon as they have heard the sound of the Spirit in the silence and solitude of their hearts, they follow its promptings even if it upsets their friends, disrupts their environment, and confuses their admirers.

    —Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life

  • “Very few people can resist saying malicious things about their acquaintances, and even on occasion about their friends; yet when people hear that anything has been said against themselves, they are filled with indignant amazement.”

    —Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

  • Dear Reader,

    We wouldn’t need books quite so much if everyone around us understood us well. But they don’t. Even those who love us get us wrong. They tell us who we are but miss things out. They claim to know what we need, but forget to ask us properly first. They can’t understand what we feel — and sometimes, we’re unable to tell them, because we don’t really understand it ourselves. That’s where books come in. They explain us to ourselves and to others, and make us feel less strange, less isolated and less alone. We might have lots of good friends, but even with the best friends in the world, there are things that no one quite gets. That’s the moment to turn to books. They are friends waiting for us any time we want them, and they will always speak honestly to us about what really matters. They are the perfect cure for loneliness. They can be our very closest friends.

    Yours,

    Alain

    ALAIN DE BOTTON’S LOVELY LETTER TO CHILDREN ABOUT WHY WE READ

  • Psychological illnesses can be passed from one person to
    another just like contagious physical illnesses…

    Having too much to do with skeptics may make one start to
    doubt. And listening to the words of the fearful may bring
    on fear. The same goes for worry, anxiety and suspicions,
    jealousy and lust, which can all be passed on through being in close contact and association with others and exchanging facts and communicating with them.

    Therefore it is necessary for a person to choose his friends.
    And it is not only psychological illnesses which can be
    spread by contagion, but spiritual illnesses too!

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life