My Five Closest Friends – Part 3

Second semester senior.

Every Sunday evening, I’d stare at the big grandfather clock…waiting, wishing.  7:45pm. It takes me five minutes to get there…I’m too anxious, so I leave. 

I walk up the dark streets, watching the light bulbs flicker off when I come their way.  The streets are covered in acorns.  Acorns and cicadas. 

Their dead skins crackle beneath my instep.

I was thinking of him, that man.  Man, I say because he was more of a man than any other I’d met.  Not only was he charming, with gorgeous eyes, high cheekbones, and a muscular face, but he was intelligent, brilliant even.  A man who followed Christ with his whole heart, mind, soul, and body.  The words he spoke were like angelic chords, God’s light on the darkness of my life.  This man let Jesus work through him.  Because of that, I love.  Because of that, I care.  Because of that, I am free.  More free than ever before because, honestly, I was living a lie.  Stuck behind the bars of my own sin.  Inhibiting me from living, truly living.

So I looked forward to these Sunday night Bible studies before I even knew what was happening to me, to my soul. 

I looked forward to getting goose bumps, and hyperventilating, and feeling like my “ideals” were being ripped into shreds, being made into true moral values.  Because there was something about this man.  Something about his words, his charm, his charisma. 

Truth poured through him.  Truth that I could not get enough of, that I craved.

I sat down amidst the amoeba of bodies, all as eager as I to hear the words Matt had to say.  Even the atheists listened.  The agnostics more so.  He drew us.

When Matt spoke, he painted a picture with his words.  He took the initial breath stroke that had been painted in our brains, all crusty and falling apart, and painted over it, erasing it.  Erasing what we thought we had, what we thought we knew, replacing it with a gentle stroke that no person could argue against.

The looks of your painting depended on your heart.  It depended on whether or not your heart’s door was open.  How far open didn’t matter.  Because even if you opened it a pin-prick, Jesus could get through.  Matt’s words helped open it further.

The sad part is that some people shut it.  Once it was open and kept open, the love and beauty and understanding and peace of Jesus flowed through it like an ocean, without end.  But some saw the then unknown overflow creeping through the open door and got scared.  Panicked.

Faith?  What a scary thought. 

What an impossible dream to believe in such a loving and forgiving God.

All it took was a leap and I was hooked.  I thank God every given day of my life for having made me, out of all the billions of people on this earth, one of those fortunate enough to know and serve Him.

All it takes is a little faith.  A little leap. 

You might let go…but He never will.

So…

Why am I not the spitting image of my five closest friends?

Who am I?  I am God’s child.  A creation protected from the sin that I am so surrounded by.  I’m not perfect, but God certainly has protected me.  Like a laminated sheet of paper.  It was nothing I did.  It was God’s grace that engulfed me.

God is my Closest Friend.  He is my Five Closest Friends.

That does not mean I am His spitting image.

I’m not God.  I’m not Superwoman.  I am me.  But that me was not shaped by a death-ridden society.  That me was baptized and prayed for by too many to count.  That me was given grace and protected from the flames of moral corruption.

He is my Five Closest Friends.

So when I walk down the street with a big smile on my face as I look up to the sky, I am talking to Him.  At times I see large groups walking, yet I am alone.

Why don’t I ever feel alone? 

I never feel alone.

Ever.

I think I might just go as far to say that my Five Closest Friends are the absolute Five Closest Friends.  Because He’s not only mine.  He’s yours. 

And that’s what I’m about.

♥ Social mistake number…?  Took me a Second.  But He is my Five Closest Friends.♥