The 12 friends?

God. Who always was one day decides to create the earth. He creates unimaginable beauty. It's amazing... perfect, well not quite. In all of his creation there is no one for him to love and no one to be loved by. Enter man. Man who is created in God's own image, who longs to be loved just like God does. Enter woman.

All of humanity is still created in God's image and designed deliberately with a need for relationships and a longing for love. Enter Jesus. God became flesh and dwelt among us. We understand that Jesus is fully God and fully man. It's not either or... it's both and. Somehow it seems that along the way we have so diefied Jesus that he has been dehumanized. We understand him to be so far away that we have a hard time connecting with him and introducing him to others in a way that they can relate to. It's in his humanity that we find solace. In his manhood that we relate to his Godliness. If he had never taken on the burden of humanity then how would we relate to him? If then Jesus was like God and we're like him then didn't he need friends too? Though you see Jesus many times pulling away from the crowds he was never there long except for a 40 day stretch in the desert. Most times we seem to see Jesus as some emotionless teacher with 12 ministry interns taking notes as he taught. Jesus lived life with these guys. He shared meal after meal, thought after thought, day after day with them. He knew them and they knew him. In short, they were friends. Remember Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane? He took Peter, James, and John not because he saw such promise for leadership in them that he gave them a special intern round table disscussion. They were his friends, his best friends. If you were walking through the most difficult time in your whole life would you want to do it alone or would you rather walk with your friends? He says to them watch and pray so you don't fall into temptation... good advice no doubt but he also said can't you even stay awake for one hour with me? I believe that the struggle within Jesus' humanity led him to not just teach his "interns" why they should pray but to ask them to stay close to him as his friends. Remember at the last supper when Jesus says that no one's love is greater than the one who is willing to lay his life down for his friends. You realize he wasn't referring to some other noble leader or father or friend that would appear on the world scene at some time in the future. He was talking about himself and calling his "interns", the disciples, his friends. I don't know about you but I don't just want to learn facts and truths about this God-man from a distance, I want to be his friend. What if we all started to realize that we were his friends? What if we were friends together. Maybe, then we would really know him and really walk with him. Sounds like the first and second commandments to me. May the friends of God hear his voice clearly and begin to befriend new disciples into friendship with God.