A maker or a keeper?

Are you a maker – or a keeper – of friends?

Some people are just really good at relating to strangers, making that first connection. They interact easily, drawing people to them and gathering friendships as easily as daisies.

Others of us are slower. We get to know someone gradually, over time. We build a friendship carefully and lovingly, tending it like a delicate plant. Phones calls are made, letters and emails sent, meetings arranged, invitations offered… And once our friendship is fully mature, we maintain it carefully. We are keepers.

There will, too, always be the folk we just ‘click’ with straightaway.  Some of those we get to keep –others, it’s just for a season. Ayla, over at Holyghostgirl talked about the saying: “People come in your life either for a reason, season, or a lifetime.” She made me think about that: that some of those relationships I would like for a lifetime are only with me for a season. There have been several occasions when, as a couple, we have ‘clicked’ with others just before they have moved to another town far away. We are still in spasmodic contact, but the relationship can’t develop as it might have done had they stayed.

I suspect  most of us are both makers AND keepers, to different degrees.

As I pondered over these, and other relationships (relationships I never expected to last beyond a season, but which have stayed with me for a lifetime) I started thinking about my relationship with God. Am I a maker or a keeper?

Do I initiate friendship with God? Do I seek new ways to know Him? Do I search Him out in His different persons? My friend Lisa, in her book Approaching God, talks about God as Father, Mother, Healer, Guide… but there are many more. Jehovah-Jireh – the Lord our Provider, to just name one. Do I try to get to know Him in that way? 

Or am I a keeper? Do I keep the friendship going in the ways I am used to, tried and tested? Do I keep communicating, through prayer, reading the Bible, keeping company with other friends of His, studying His words?

I suspect I am, often, neither a maker nor a keeper, to different degrees.

This is a friendship more important than any other. One I need to keep. And to nurture.