Last week I officiated the wedding ceremony for two friends that I have known since I was nine years old. They have known each other since they were four years of age. We spent part of our \u201cgrowing-up\u201d years in the same church \u2013 same children\u2019s ministry, same youth ministry, same missions organizations, same baptistery, same summer camp, same note passing in worship services (we were before cell phone text messaging). When we went our separate ways, they met and married the loves of their lives, had wonderful marriages, raised families, and eventually experienced the death of their spouses. Then they re-connected, fell in love, and now they are married. I\u2019m so glad I got to be a part of their ceremony. Long before Michael W. Smith sang \u201cFriends are friends forever . . . a lifetime’s not too long to live as friends,\u201d the writer of Proverbs said, \u201cthe rich has many friends\u201d (Proverbs 14:20). I am rich with friendships \u2013 friendships that span the years of time. As we approach this Thanksgiving season, we would all do well to give thanks for our friends. Today I am thankful for Fred and Claire, my newlywed friends. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week I officiated the wedding ceremony for two friends that I have known since I was nine years old. They have known each other since they were four years of age. We spent part of our \u201cgrowing-up\u201d years in the same church \u2013 same children\u2019s ministry, same youth ministry, same missions organizations, same baptistery,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2668,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions\/2668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}