Friendship Project Part 1

Everyday, commuters form community.  

Trains, planes and automobiles transform strangers into companions.  Many spouses see other commuters more than their mates.  Some schoolchildren are influenced more by bus drivers than their parents.  Shared experience makes fast friends.

Commuting is a shared experience but any situation will do.  Watching the game, Starbuck's runs or dropping off kindergarteners can draw strangers closer.  Parenting changed Cherith Fluker from a stranger to a friend.

"We were seeing [people] two or three times a week because we were in the same place.  We would see [other parents] all day on Saturday standing at tournaments."  Cherith is the mother of two children and volleyball was the shared experience.  

When Cherith buried one parent within months of the other, she learned to lean on her companions.  When the children went off to college and empty-nesting stirred questions, her friends supported her.  Navigating change, however, changed Cherith.  

[Cherith's] friendships have shifted.  While Fluker, 43, believes in "make new friends, but keep the old," she's finding new friends focused on her interests, "not the people at the volleyball game because their kids play volleyball.  That's our kids' [thing], not our thing." (reference)

Death and life changed the Flukers' associations and their experience is common.  A new job changes the carpool which changes the friend group: children graduate; bus routes change; the season ends.  Fractured community can reduce the commute to a sea of strangers.  Starting all over takes courage.

Jen has courage.

Jen McDonald is a pro at making friends, having moved a dozen times during her husband's military career.  She now lives in San Antonio, TX and is the author of You Are Not Alone: Encouragement for the Heart of a Military Spouse.  Making friends wasn't always easy, she says.  In her early 20's, she was so nervous about attending a women's group that she convinced her husband to wait for her in the entryway.  "I'm not like that at all now," she says.  "I think it's just something you must practice.  you reach out to people and see how it goes." (reference) 

Jen had to start all over. 

Moses had to start all over.  

After witnessing a friend being beaten, Moses murdered the assailant.  Seeing no witnesses, Moses hid the murdered man's body in Egyptian sand.  Later, another of his friends mentioned the deed and asked if Moses was going to kill again.  Frightened, Moses fled the only hometown he knew.

Death changed Cherith and death changed Moses.  Death changes us, but any situation will do.  One text message, email or voicemail can shatter friendships.  What do we do when an old story and a new[er] story catch us in their crosshairs?  Jen and Moses differ only in the years they lived and times they moved.  

Each had to start over and we might have to start over too.

Moses restarted over 3,000 years ago but his life offers helpful lessons.  Susan Moeller of Boston Globe Magazine and AARP.org offers tips for navigating a landscape of changing friendships.

Before a sea parted, Moses had a set of fast friends.  Raised with every advantage, the Bible teaches that his lifelong community fractured in a single day.

 Now it came about in those days, when Moses had grown up, that he went out to his fellow Hebrews and looked at their hard labors; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his fellow Hebrews. ~ Exodus 2:11

Witnessing assault sparked Moses' premeditated murder of an Egyptian.  Exodus persuades that Moses killed for friendship's sake, as brotherhood and Jewishness were woven into the same verse.  Fellow or Hebrew sufficed to tie Moses to the plight of the battered but the end of verse 11 magnified Moses' affinity by mentioning "his fellow Hebrews". 

Exodus 2:1-5 tie Moses' Hebraic origins to his adulthood.  Though raised in Pharaoh's palace, probably with great privileges, he chose to identify with an oppressed people group.  Moses' affinity runs along Susan Moeller's rails for friendship: vulnerable, intentional, habitual, optimistic, welcoming and use the right technology.

A dive into the life of Moses, through the lens of friendship reveals lessons about his life and ours.