“Come, best friend”

“Come, best friend!” I heard Little shout over his shoulder to the boy at the park, and he disappeared in a flash of denim.

After the muggy Indiana weather, we’d decided to break last night, heading up to the playground located in the heart of our small town.  Just past hanging baskets of blooms, past American flags all aflutter, it sits, that beautiful monument – a huge play set erected in five days by hundreds of volunteers one wet, chilly fall. 

My heart twisted again, seeing the names of the two to which it is dedicated, our beloved school nurse and a former coffee buddy/neighbor.  I read the inscription on the memorial from my spot in the shade, thoughts turning heavenward, and there he went.

Up and down and round and about went Little.  Down the slides, up the steps, and over the swinging bridge before landing on the tire swing with another little boy from class. 

“Come, best friend!” 

I smiled inside, delighting in his childhood innocence.  Just last week when his cousins had been here, he’d called them the same thing.  “They’re my best friends,” he’d proclaimed, grinning eager, eyes alight.  “He’s my best friend.” 

Sitting in the yard this morning, breeze blowing cool, coffee steaming warm, I eagerly opened the Word, wanting to hear His voice.  To read His heart.  To sit – just sit – in His presence.  And I thought of the younger me. 

How I wish that girl, so burdened by guilt and have-to’s, could have known how delightful, how satisfying it is, having Jesus for a best friend.  How glad and thankful I am that He really has become my best friend.  I don’t “have to” spend time with Him anymore.  I don’t “have to” pray anymore.  I want to.  Oh, how I want to!

There are times that sheer desperation drives me to His lap.  There are days that this smallish mother of four sons goes running, reaching, clutching wrinkles straight into His hem ’cause she knows where her help lies.  But very often, all throughout the day, with murmurs constant, I simply talk to my Friend, and He talks to me.

“Come, Best Friend.  Oh, come.”