Blessed With Much Wealth

Wealth is measured in various ways: Money, land, and possessions, or  influence, education, and power, or wisdom, talent, and skill. Wealth is something that belongs to us, and something we cherish. We fight to keep our wealth, and if we lose it we mourn. Everyone has wealth. The greatest wealth any of us have is something that we can give away, yet never run out of. In fact, the more of it that we give away, the more we have. Friendship! Friends are a God given source of our greatest wealth.

We have many types of friends. There are old friends. We’ve known them all of our lives. We have work friends, church friends, recreational friends, and friends we seldom see, yet, they are such good friends when we do see them we carry on as though we’ve never been apart. There are friends that we don’t even like all that much. We have fair weather friends, maybe some friends whom we don’t speak to anymore. Of course there are those friends who have hurt us, and friends we have hurt. Some friends stand beside us no matter what disagreements we’ve had. What about those friends who have come along at exactly the right time to help us. Those we’ve never seen before and will never see again? Perhaps those “angels unaware friends”.

There are new friends, young friends, friends of friends, and  friends for a season. On and on through life’s cycle we make friends, people with whom we share the joys, the celebrations, the heartaches, anxieties and fears, times of waiting, and periods of sorrow. And we have friends who we will never see again, at least in this world. For them we mourn.  We are indeed people of great wealth if we have friends. Friends, gifts from God, who make this tough earthly journey more bearable and much more pleasant.