A Slice of Infinity

01/23/07
Side by Side
Betsy Childs

I was recently reminded of a beautiful poem by Philip Booth. In "First Lesson," the narrator teaches his daughter how to swim. He gently instructs her that she must relax and lie back in order to float; to help her do this, he lightly holds her until she is floating and he can withdraw his hands without her noticing. The poem ends:

As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Years ago, when I first read this poem, I was struck by the resemblance the image of the sea bears to God's sustaining grace. When we are fighting to keep ourselves afloat, we cannot feel God's grace, but when we cease striving and trust God, we find that He always gives us "grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16).

I still love the image of the sea in the poem, but this time the resemblance that struck me was that between the role of the one giving the lesson and the role of a Christian in friendship. Friendship is a topic that is rarely addressed in Christian teaching. That may be because we expect that it should come naturally and effortlessly. But I have found that most Christians are not exactly where they would like to be in terms of friendships; most of us either move through life independently or fall to the other extreme of being overly dependent on our friends, looking to them for fulfillment that can only ultimately come from Christ.

Consider the image of a father teaching his daughter to swim: he holds her, but the point of his holding her is to let her go. He holds her in a way so that she can feel what it is to be lifted up by the sea, and once she gets used to that feeling, she finds he is no longer supporting her.

That is one picture of what Christian friendship should be. We should be helping each other learn how to live by grace, not in our own strength, and not in the strength of our friends. If the friendship itself becomes the point of the friendship, it will sour. C. S. Lewis (one of the few great Christian writers who wrote extensively on friendship) puts it this way:

[W]e picture lovers face to face, but Friends side by side; their eyes look ahead. That is why those pathetic people who simply "want friends" can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question Do you see the same truth? would be "I see nothing and I don't care about the truth; I only want a Friend," no Friendship can arise--though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice.(1)



The very best friendships are those that are about God Himself. Friends should bear one another's burdens in a way that lifts them up to God, not in a way that makes the friend indispensable. Some of you who do not feel a keen need to be needed may have no idea what I'm talking about, but if you've ever felt a yearning to know that someone couldn't get along without you, you know what I'm talking about. We must resist the temptation to hope that our friends will come to depend upon us and instead hope that knowing us will help them become more dependent upon God.

If you have been on the receiving end of such a friendship, one that encourages you to lie back and rest your full weight on the sustaining love of God, you have been richly blessed. Do not forget that the purpose of the one holding you up was, ultimately, to release you. There are times when we must hold one another up, but we should do it in the hope that someday we'll be able to float side by side, gazing up at the stars.