Buying Time

Well, it's been a few months.
A lot has happened since I've last posted, but why don't we go easy and start it out with a story? Well, here's a story about me and a friend I held close, or thought I held close, temporarily. Last year near this time, February 2011 to be more exact, everything started to change for me. Through developing new friendships at school and at church, God led me to a change of heart on the inside. From feeling boring and ugly to knowing I am empowered and lovely because of Christ. I had been really good at closing myself off to everyone, without them noticing, but I couldn't withdraw from God. He was and always is with me, coaxing me out of oblivion and into an oasis of love and fellowship. Jesus' redemption allowed me to open myself up and share my heart.

This story is mainly about a boy I met at church. He was going through a phenomenal change in Christ, just as I was at the time, but his previous struggles were much different than mine. In short, I think we both loved getting to know another person with a similar newfound passion for Jesus. We became acquaintances, and then quick friends. Soon enough, we were sending each other encouraging little wall posts on facebook and conversing in small talk about life, nothing more. The thing is encouraging wall posts isn't something you always find on facebook, and especially between a guy and a girl who're just friends - or at least that's how I see it. So I found that pretty special. But! I think at some point our appreciation for each others' friendship was standing on different levels. Before this great growth we had through Christ, he was used to relationships, lots of close ones, probably sometimes unhealthy. I was used to a lack of relationships, also an unhealthy situation, but in a opposite way. Due to this, I just saw him as a really friendly encouraging guy, someone I was lucky to have met, and a guy friend you don't just stumble upon easily. To him, I stood out, but I found out at one point that it was a little bit more than just friends.
To summarize the rest of it, he ended up losing the connections and inner strength that he'd found from church and through Christ. It breaks my heart all the time to think how it could've all happened. That someone could be on fire for God at one time and then disappear from it all. It bothers me to think that maybe I could've stopped that from happening, but I think more than that, I know that I'm changed because of getting to meet him at one point. And I'm grateful for that part of my life.

I don't want to put words into his mouth, but I think maybe that in all that fire for Christ, he maybe didn't actually get the point - and I could be totally wrong. But what I think of is this. I remember in our encouraging facebook messages, we'd say little things like "Stay strong" and the sort. But, what does that even mean? Really, it's nice, but I realize now that it's kind of meaningless those words. I think that in my happiness to meet someone like him and befriend him, I didn't even notice that little encouraging messages only mean so much. Our words didn't really have a base or foundation behind them. I think if you talk to someone and hear them out on their struggles, "stay strong" may be an appropriate thing to say with some actual depth. But without knowing much else about another person's life, encouraging words are helpful but may eventually go to deaf ears. Of course, this is the way to start a friendship and lead to a deeper one. The way my mentor puts it is the idea of milk and meat. A baby needs milk to survive, it can't live on meat at first, but later on it's need meat not milk. (Well not if you're vegetarian, but you understand me.) So basically our friendship might've been able to go further and maybe we could've had conversations about scriptural-based things and opinions on our lives, but bottom line growing cannot just be at a standstill. If you're not growing, you're dying. I always remember a speaker at camp saying that.

I guess my big point is that I've made friendships that have grown immensely, some that have come to know Christ and really truly know him for life. Everyone starts out seeming like someone with a lot of potential, like maybe they will be a devoted Christ follower. But some don't end up getting there, instead they drift away. That's what I've found with some friends. But there's a definite trend, those friendships were built upon foundations that once taken away tumbled the friendship, things like spending time together involuntarily (like as an everyday routine thing). On the other end, there are friendships where both people are constantly intentional and reaching out to each other to make an effort, friendships that can be picked back up wherever and whenever they are left off. When I invest time into a friendship, and the other friend reciprocates that, they have been able to come to know God as I do. It's spectacular how that works. And to my last thought, this is the way I see it. By pouring time into someone else's life, you buy them time. No, I don't mean that you can purchase time that they've already lost. But, yes, if you successfully spend your own time on them, you buy more time for them... time in heaven for eternity. And there's no greater gift than that. It's all through Christ and through love and time after time after time. Just like God never fails on us and never leaves.