Dear Friends

This blog is not very fancy. I don't dress it up with pictures or other forms of entertainment. Reminds me that our lives should not be marked by such stuff but good fellowship where we enjoy each other for each other's sake. No television, movies, computer games and the like...only each other. So far we have had the privilege of spending time with a family in Vacation Land (Maine) where these forms of entertainment are not sought to add to the time. Instead we learned from each other through old fashioned means...like conversation, playing board games, and other forms of healthy activity that has, quite simply, bound my heart up with theirs. In our two visits with them, they have become family to me and I love them dearly. Our first and second visits Saturdays were spent outdoors doing tasks that were needed. My first visit Saturday I assisted my host in fixing a tractor that had a leaky seal in the driving column. The second visit Saturday (two weeks later) I, and several of the young men in my family, assisted in splitting and cutting up wood. Not that I am counting any of these things as "good deeds" as if I'd rather be doing something else. Quite the contrary. These were means by which we learned to enjoy each other while accomplishing something needful. These two separate weekend visits were perhaps some of my most memorable times in recent memory. I know few of us, in either family, would have thought this if we, instead, spent the time by playing video games, watching movies and the like. Undoubtedly not many would think of our time as something they would look forward to. Perhaps since we, as a family, prefer this form of "entertainment" it might explain why we have so few we would call friends. I would venture that our new friends in Maine would second this motion. My definition for friendship includes genuine fellowship and this can't quite happen if our times are used up doing unprofitable things. As we desire to know Christ, we are inevitably weened from the milk of the Word of God to more substance, which challenges us in the deeper truths. Friendship is all about genuine fellowship where there is real edification and spiritual sharpening going on. We don't always say easy things. We are free to discourse things that perhaps are not so easy to swallow. I have never been one to enjoy the superficiality of surface friendship - those who say the right things and do the right things but whose hearts are guarded and closed. But with our dear friends (and they are becoming dearer to us) I look towards heaven and express wonderment that God could be so gracious. We are a lonely lot and to enjoy such comradeship with an entire family is a wonderful breath of fresh air and a great source of encouragement to me and my family. We, who often feel quite alone and lonely along the path God has set for us, have met up (at last!) with another family along the same lonely road. Let us be lonely together shall we dear friends?

-Joe