My Best Friend

To the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. Ephesians 1:6

Follow a person on social media and he or she might have a large number of followers and live far away geographically from where you or I live. With no prior relationship, calling that person a best friend seems a bit far-fetched. How would he or she have the time to devote to a friendship? And why would that person pick out you or me as a best friend from among a hundred thousand or more followers? Perhaps a smaller group, a couple of hundred 'friends' on a different platform? I have less than that on one well-known platform, but hardly could most of them be called best friends with such big chunks of their life's story missing from my knowledge.  Each of us might have several best friends throughout life as we come together in a stage of life (school, college, work, et al.) and then move apart for some reason. So, if numbers and location are a problem for maintaining a best friend, how do we explain Jesus? 

This man knows billions of living persons right now, plus a similar number who have died, and an unknown (to us) number to be born. How does He maintain this number of friends? Not all of them want to know Him? Some refuse to believe he exists? True, but that still leaves such a great number that my mind cannot understand how my best friend does it. For the Lord Jesus, sitting at the right hand of God, knows each of us better than anyone, and yet is our best friend in every case. A wife or husband might leave you, and some of you know that all too well. A best friend in high school lives far away now and is almost a stranger these many years later. Even a parent and child will have experiences apart that are unknown to each other. How does Jesus know all about us as our best friend when He is in Heaven? Wait...ALL about us? 

Part of maintaining friendships here on the Earth is that some things are not known one to another lest the former friend flee in horror or terror or something! How can Jesus know each of us so intimately and yet remain our best of friends? We may answer with the truth: love, goodness, compassion and more, and yet that explanation might seem almost like a foreign tongue to us. How can Jesus know that thing I did or those thoughts I have entertained and still be my best friend?!!  There is that thing He is using, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved: grace. 

What an amazing thing is the grace of God! 

Bucky