Friendship When Your Fields Increase

Proverbs 17:17 says that a friend loves at all times. But, love does different things at different times. You might think it is a good thing to bless your friend with a loud voice. But not early in the morning (Proverbs 27:14).

Now God is clearly increasing our fields. This is a fulfillment of God’s promise through Ezekiel. When he puts a new heart and new spirit in his people, he adds, “I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field.” With these blessings comes the need to work the increased fields and tend to the multiplying fruit. 

Real friendship at a time like this will require a good deal of diligent work with a heavy helping of cheerful patience. You’re a part of a growing church, growing community, growing schools, growing businesses, and growing families. With increased fruit and fields, and increased laborers, somebody is bound to get frantic, some else is going to get elbowed by accident, some fruit will be plucked a week later than it should have been. And you may start to feel a longing for calmer days, saying, “Back then my stalls may not have had oxen in them, but at least they were clean!”

There’s a mistaken vision of friendship that terminates on the friends, does not require faith or work, and begins to silo itself off both from real needs and from what God is doing in the world. After a big night of hospitality, one of the most friendly things a husband can do is the dishes. As a husband comes home after a long day’s work, one of friendliest things a wife can do is feed him a tasty meal at a good price.

It is through these steady, cheerful, and sacrificial blessings that true friendships are built. And here is the abiding principle of friendship, no matter the season of life: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

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