The phone rang and a voice said, “Are you Lavon Hightower?” This was the beginning of a renewed friendship.
Not long after that, our 40-year high school reunion took place and some of us reestablished our friendships. Before that, those of us who lived here in Vinita were friends, in passing. We were always cordial when we bumped into each other, but we didn’t make time to get together.
My classmates and I shared common experiences. We all had the same teachers, the same assignments, the same ball teams. We lived through the turbulent 1960s, with assassination of President Kennedy, the Space Program, the Vietnam conflict. At graduation our lives took different turns.
My friendships now with some of my former classmates go beyond common experiences of growing up in the same town and attending the same school. It is more than mutual life experiences of growing up in the 1960s.
Now we make time to get together for lunch and get caught up on what is happening in our lives. We make an effort to meet when sometimes it isn’t convenient.
Then we were friends because of circumstances, but now we are friends by choice.
Abraham is called “friend of God” three times in the Bible. Abraham built an altar to God in Hebron. That name came from the Hebrew root word, ‘chabar’ pronounced khaw-bar meaning couple together, have fellowship with, join together, league and usually interpreted as “friend.”
Abraham and God had nothing in common. God had everything. Abraham had nothing, except what God had given him. They only had a covenant, a league, a pact, a deal.
God offered Abraham a deal, “Leave your country and your family and follow me, and I will make you a great nation.” Abraham took God at His word and left home, not knowing where he was going. Abraham’s descendants became a great nation, Israel.
.James 2: 23 KJV, “Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.”
God chose Abraham, and then Abraham chose God. Friends by choice.