Life Lessons for Anxious Kids | Tree Street Kids DevotionalSample

Making new friends

Jack took a sharp left onto Oak Street, bunny-hopped his new bike over the curb, and flew down the sidewalk toward his new house. He wasn’t calling it home yet. 

Dark clouds and a blast of wind greeted him. 

He bowed his head and pedaled faster, the first raindrops attacking like tiny stingers across his face and arms. He wasn’t going to make it back before the storm. 

A loud splintering sounded overhead.

Jack slammed his brakes, skidding the bike to a stop just as a tree limb broke and crashed down in front of him. Whoa! He was just about to pedal on around it when lightning split the sky like a new zipper. Thunder rattled every window of the small homes lining the street. The rain fell harder. 

“Hey! Take cover!” Jack heard a faint voice coming from the house on his right. Through the rain he made out a kid about his size standing in the doorway. 

He hopped off his bike and ran as the sky unleashed what felt like an assault of water balloons. He leaned the bike against the front of the house and dove through the door, soaked but safe. 

The door slammed shut behind him. 

Jack stood there dripping water all over the tile floor. 

A boy his age with black rimmed glasses and a neat flat top haircut smiled at him. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” 

Jack swiped his wet arm across his wet face. He glanced around the room. Or was it a library? The walls were covered with bookshelves, and there were no TV or video games in sight. 

The boy hurried back carrying a beach towel with palm trees and pink flamingos. He tossed it to Jack.

Jack rubbed his hair and wrapped the towel around his shoulders, suddenly shivering.

“I’m Ellison,” the boy said. “Do you want a cup of chai tea? My mom makes it all the time.” 

“Um, sure?” Jack had no idea what chai tea was but at least it sounded warm.

“Come on into the kitchen. You can use our phone to call home.”

Jack couldn’t call it home yet, but he did call his mom to tell her he was safe. Then he watched Ellison boil water with black tea bags and whole spices, like cinnamon sticks and not the powdered kind he put on toast. 

Ellison poured in milk and honey--extra, he said.

The sweet, cinnamon-y tea burned Jack’s tongue but warmed him up fast. “Hey,” Jack said, “thanks for helping me out.” 

“Sure! That’s what friends do.” Ellison shoved his glasses up. “Um, I mean, do you want to be friends?”

Jack wasn’t sure if he and Ellison had much in common, but no one had ever saved him from a storm either. 

Moving to a new neighborhood or starting at a new school means having to make new friends too. Everyone wants to find a place to fit in and to be accepted. But that isn’t as important as making the kind of friends God wants for us. Proverbs says that those kinds of friends always love us and stick by us in tough times.

Words to hold on to when you’re making friends and being a friend: “A friend loves at all times.”