It should have been no surprise to me. I simply haven’t made the effort to keep in touch with them. To be honest, I find myself struggling to make time at all for my friends. As a task-oriented person in a performance-driven culture, I let career, television, the Internet, and even my reading list get in the way of maintaining my friendships. I have ducked into the house to avoid neighbors or screened phone calls because I felt I had too much to do to take the time to talk.

But I’m beginning to realize my to-do list is a bottomless pit, and oddly, the more I cross off, the longer it grows. As I get older, I’m learning to invest in my friendships because I’m beginning to realize how much I need them. With God’s grace I will continue to get better at placing people above projects.

God is relational and created us to be in relationship with Him and others. Friendships are vital to our spiritual, mental, and emotional well-being. Yet both work and play can interfere with maintaining those friendships, so we might just have to put work on hold to call that friend we haven’t talked to in a while. On the other hand, a good chunk of our time may be absorbed in meaningless leisure, such as too much television or the Internet. In that case we can choose activities that allow conversation and relationship building. We need our friendships; making time to invest in them is wise.