March 8, 2022 | Fr. Justin Clemente
This past Wednesday, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Mary Booth, co-leader of “True Friendship,” a small group dedicated to understanding biblical friendship as the cure for loneliness.
After the second gathering, she was eager to speak with me. The group had eight people present (I did not attend), and the discussion was vigorous! Mary relayed how, now that this group is really digging into their study, there are potentials for real disagreement – and real growth.
Questions and topics from the second session included:
- Should Christians fear God?
- Does God hear the prayers of those who have not repented and are not baptized?
While I did give clear instruction around these two topics, my deepest prayer is that the group will wrestle with these and other crucial questions for themselves. That is where the gold lies! Some in this group are not baptized, some have not been exposed to the Scriptures, some are professing Christians with no Christian community, and some are enthusiastic believers. What a good mix!
Would you pray for this group this Lent? Pray that the Holy Spirit will keep them on track, seeking friendship with God through the mediation and work of Jesus Christ alone, and therefore finding true friendship with one another, too. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote:
“The more genuine and the deeper our community [in Christ] becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us.”
Life Together
May it be so with the work of True Friendship, Tammy Swisher & Mary Booth, and our friends – the people of Walnut Towers.