A weekly highlight for us is dinner with our sons and their families. Be it a celebratory turkey dinner or a simple bowl of homemade soup and fresh baked bread, the thrill is in being together. Far more important than the food is the joy of having our three-year-old granddaughter living near us. Now that the two older granddaughters are studying at universities in two separate provinces, we cherish the laughter, chatter and time spent with Lucy.
I admit it. I love people. I love being surrounded by family and friends and I highly value the mutual support that comes from knowing there are those who are covering my back, as I am doing for them.
But how to describe a friend without sounding trite or syrupy? To find the answer, I turn to my trusty Internet for some definitions; here are a few powerful quotes:
Aristotle remarked that friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies. When I read Bill Watterson's remark, "Things are never quite as scary when you've got a best friend," I couldn't help but whisper an amen. Thomas Edison put it so well when he asserted "I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favour of the kings of the world." No greater gift than that.
There are many more of these succinct definitions of a word that carries so much emotion but one of my favourites has got to be this nugget from Oscar Wilde: "True friends stab you in the front." It also reminds me of something a very wise man observed thousands of years ago: "A friend loves at all times, and is born, as is a brother, for adversity." (Proverbs 17:17 - Amplified Version)
How grateful I am for true friends, be they blood relatives or not. Amen.
