A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity. Proverbs 17:17
“We think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends “You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.” The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others.”
C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960) 126.
Generosity comes into view in few contexts more vividly than friendship. God, like a “secret Master of the Ceremonies” brings people into our lives which bring out the best in us and we see the beauty in others.
In this classic, Lewis adds “Friendship (as the ancients saw) can be a school of virtue; but also (as they did not see) a school of vice. It is ambivalent. It makes good men better and bad men worse” (115).
So, it is an instrument that contributes to our growth and the growth of others, or vice versa. I am finding that the more time I give to friendship, the more I am blessed in return.
In the USA it is a holiday weekend. Step back as much as you can from your work, and give yourself to others richly, with kindness, grace, love and compassion, and see what happens.