Seasons Of The LordSample

The Crown of Love and Friendship

“Abraham my friend.”  —Isaiah 41:8

How rich in suggestion is John Keats’s tribute to divine friendship in his poem “Endymion”:

"Wherein lies happiness? In that which beckons

Our ready minds to fellowship divine,

A fellowship with essence.

The crown of these

Is made of love and friendship, and sits high

Upon the forehead of humanity."

Abraham, more than any other person, seems to have had such “fellowship with essence” in abundance, for God called him “my friend.” Jehoshaphat spoke to God of “Abraham thy friend for ever” (2 Chronicles 20:7), while James says of the patriarch, “He was called the Friend of God” (James 2:23). Although so highly privileged, Abraham was not alone in wearing upon his forehead the crown of divine friendship. Cowper wrote:

"Throned above the heights He condescends,

To call the few that trust in Him, His friends."

Jesus said to His disciples, “I call you not servants…but I have called you friends” (John 15:15). Through grace we, too, are brought into a fellowship of heart and mind, a sharing of the thoughts and purposes of Jesus. How arrestive are Shakespeare’s lines in Hamlet:

"Those friends thou bast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel."

As Jesus is the friend who sticks closer to us than a brother, may we be found grappling Him to our hearts with hoops of steel. He laid down His life for His friends—and enemies.

"In that day the Lord of hosts will be a crown of glory, and a diadem of beauty, to the remnant of his people, and a spirit of justice to him who sits in judgment, and strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate." (Isaiah 28:5–6 ESV)