A midnight snack for the mind

A midnight compilation of relatively random thoughts:

My dad is singing in the choir at my church back home for the Christmas season. I am happy about this because I sang in the choir for three years and tried at various times to get him to join, but he never did. Now that I'm not there, he's starting to sing again. Because he's in the choir, he is in contact with the worship pastor. The worship pastor asked him to ask me if I would be available to sing on the worship team at some time during the three weeks I will be home between semesters. Of course! I'll do it gladly! They've also decided that I can sing with the choir for the Christmas Eve service and on Christmas morning. I get home on Tuesday night and will be there for one practice on Wednesday evening to sing Christmas Eve Saturday and Christmas morning Sunday. They are even going to see about mailing the music to me so I am familiar with it before I show up. I find that all rather amusing. It should be fun. I think I would rather do it this way than sit in a pew the whole time I was back home!

I can go for a long time without talking to some of my friends (even though I insist on calling my parents almost every day whether or not there is anything to talk about), but I've spoken at least briefly to three in the past three days - one friend from college who lives in Oregon, one long-time friend who lives close to where we grew up, and one more recent but very close friend from church back home. There are cycles of emotions when you (meaning I, of course) move from one place to another and start the process of making new friends. At first there is little expectation of finding good friends right away, so if you don't have a new best friend you consider it no tragedy. Then you start to get to know some people, and that's exciting, even if you know none of them well. The next stage is when you know people a little bit better but still haven't found that really close friend, and that's where I find myself now. I know more people and spend time with them more often now, but I am starting to feel lonely for the closeness I had with friends back home and in college. This lonely time is the same time that I heard three dear voices. I needed that, especially since they represent the three previous stages of my life: childhood up through high school, college and the time between college and my move to New York. God has always provided me with friends, so I have no reason to doubt that I will find good, close ones here. Funny thing is that with two of them, the ones from more recent times, I knew them for a while before we became good friends. One I considered a tag-along and resented for quite some time before realizing that she became one of the dearest people in my life. Another I had actually known for several years and did not like at all and was convinced that she did not like me either. One heart to heart chat later I had found a wonderful friend. Sometimes our best friends come from the most unexpected places, so if I make expectations, I need to expect that God is going to blow me away with blessings.

Scrabble can help stave off loneliness, too. Saturday morning and afternoon were going to be devoted to cleaning my apartment and doing laundry, but mid-way through sweeping the kitchen floor I got a better offer. My third week at church here I started talking to an older woman who was sitting beside me during the service (this was before I found out that the people my age sat up in the balcony) and she invited me to lunch. After lunch we were talking and she mentioned that she likes to play Scrabble but finds it hard to find Scrabble partners. I like playing Scrabble, so I told her to give me a call if she ever needed someone to play with her. She called on Saturday and asked me to go to lunch with her and then to her house for a game of Scrabble. I lost, as I always do with that game, but had a good time in the process. We then walked through her spacious back yard through which runs a creek and houses her husband's impressive collection of tractors. She told me about her doll collection and about how they really don't keep chickens, even though there are about a dozen of them on their property. Friends can be much older or younger than we are, and that is good for the body of Christ as well as for us personally.

There is a line from the hymn "Great is Thy Faithfulness" that I remind myself of over and over: "All I have needed Thy had hath provided." God gives us what we need, and if we don't have it we don't really need it. I believe that. If I bemoan the fact that I don't have a close friend yet I need to look at what I have: Jesus. He is a friend, and if I am not content with that it is because I am not seeking His friendship as I ought to. What a friend we have in Jesus. All I have needed has been provided. (See the comment I posted here for a hymn/poem by John Newton that I discovered after writing this.)