One of the most important things a parent can do for a child is to teach him or her how to make good friends.
For there is no denying that the friendship choices a child makes as he or she grows will have a HUGE impact on the direction and destination of the child’s life.
We’ve all seen kids who grew into successful, friendly, responsible adults who have few enemies.
And we’ve seen kids who ended up in overly stressful, unsuccessful and irresponsible lives filled with anger toward — and from — their peers.
We parents have only a few years to teach our kids about making good friends and that’s why it is so important that they see us making good friends.
This topic is also quite important to God.
Here is His view of the matter, taken from today’s reading in the One-Year Bible.
“The righteous choose their friends carefully.” (Proverbs 12:26)
This isn’t about being aloof and not being kind and engaging to all those around us.
We are called to love everybody and treat them the way that we would like to be treated.
But when it comes to those we allow to influence us — those we consider our “friends” — discretion is required.
For this kind of friendship represents a team mentality.
Jesus loved everybody but only a certain few were on His team of friends.
You can be sure that a winning sports team isn’t comprised of people who simply happened to be standing next to each other when the game started and they spontaneously knew how to do each thing required to win.
Each was selected because of common goals, complementary skills and compatible personalities.
It wasn’t an ego thing, but instead a mission thing.
Listen, let’s love everybody. But let’s be wise in who we ask to join the crew of people we work with in this thing called life. That way, our “team” will be characterized by abundant success rather than over-the-top stress.
As always, I love you
Martin
