To Sarah

A very Happy Birthday to Sarah!

It gives me great pleasure today, to take a pause from the ordinary demands of life and reflect upon the Lord's mercies and grace which are new every morning. His blessings are numerous, but today I want to focus on just one: friendship. What a privilege it is that God should place people in our lives - fellow pilgrims, traveling saints - and that we should find strength and encouragement in one another. Today, I am thankful for twelve years of friendship with Sarah. Twelve years of growing. Twelve years of phone calls, emails, pillow talk time, summer visits, book discussions, sermon sharing, laughter, celebrations, and close fellowship. We've been through so much together. Nothing can ever change our love for each other. Our dedication to each other is not based on external likenesses, but on internal convictions and shared desires.

On another note: Today, Sarah is two decades old! That's right. Twenty!

After all those years of being teenagers together...today is the close of a chapter. I pray the Lord's blessing on the years to come, that each day might be another step heavenward.

Thus nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on some support; and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship.- Cicero