Pastor’s Corner: The Spiritual Gift of Friends

August 15, 2018

When the apostle Paul wrote about spiritual gifts, he had leadership of the Church in mind. That’s why the list of gifts he tends to use (see 1 Corinthians 12) emphasize Church-ready blessings: the utterance of wisdom, the declaration of knowledge, faith, miracle-working, prophecy, the discernment of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpreting what someone else said in tongues.

It’s fairly easy to see how any one of these would serve a congregation well. It’s fairly easy to see that a church blessed with a number of these would be a Church to seek out.

My mind wanders, however, to the variety I find among the people I call friends.

They come from so many places. They’ve lived through so many experiences. They’ve had so many kinds of education. They speak with so many accents. They laugh at so many different things. They cry from so many different griefs. They’re at so many different ages. They have so many different ideas of God.

Some of these friends make me laugh. Some of these friends help me make music. Some of these friends kick me when I need a boost. Some of them give me a hand up when I need a boost. Some help me cry. Some help me play. Some help me pray.

Poor Paul. He concentrated so on the Big Spiritual Gifts, the ones Ready for Immediate Use in the Church, that he may have missed the gift of friends. I hope he didn’t. I hope he just didn’t include them in his letters, because he had Other Things to Say.

Whatever Paul may have known or not known, however, I know what I know. I know that friends are among God’s most precious gifts to us.

Mahalo ke Akua!

With aloha,

Pastor Eric