Do you have a good friend? What a great blessing if you do! If you have several as I do, then you are many blessed. In the great movie, “A Wonderful Life”, the angel Clarence wrote in the book he left George, “ no man is a failure who has friends”. The wise Solomon said that there is a friend that can be even closer than a brother. I suspect that kind of friend is what we call a “true” friend.

Friends are the flowers of life – what a dismal place this would be without friends. Storms will come and go and when they do, friends are what carry us through when we’re weak and weary – too weak, too weary to take one more step. Shakespeare had Cassius say in his play, “Julius Caesar”, “ a friend should bear his friend’s burdens”. Perhaps Shakespeare was restating what the apostle Paul wrote to the Galatian Christians, “carry each other’s burdens…”. And what a blessing to have the Greatest Friend of all. “What a Friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear…..”.

I think the following poem by the great poet, Henry Van Dyke says so much of what a true friend is.

A MILE WITH ME

By Henry Van Dyke

O WHO will walk a mile with me

Along life’s merry way?

A comrade blithe and full of glee,

Who dares to laugh out loud and free,

And let his frolic fancy play,

Like a happy child, through the flowers gay

That fill the field and fringe the way

Where he walks a mile with me.

And who will walk a mile with me

Along life’s weary way?

A friend whose heart has eyes to see

The stars shine out o’re the darkening lea,

And the quiet rest at the end o’ the day,-

A friend who knows, and dares to say,

The brave, sweet words that cheer the way

Where he walks a mile with me.

With such a comrade, such a friend,

I fain would walk till journey’s end,

Through summer sunshine, winter rain,

And then? – Farewell, we shall meet again!