An Ode to Friends

This life is a tunnel with no light at the end, only Someone assuring us that if we keep walking, we will get out of it. This tunnel is a maze that we can only hope we are getting better at solving and closer to exiting.

Friends are little candles along the way. Some last longer than others before they go out, and sometimes we ourselves are candles that last for different periods of time for others. It feels wonderful to have a candle, and it feels wonderful to be a candle.

Sometimes we can be candles for one another, and therefore have a flame and light that burns twice as strong.

These candles do not always lead us along this maze in the best possible way, but they always help us understand this maze a little better. And they are often better to have than wandering on our own in the dark.

Sometimes, these candles are so helpful, that we actually begin to enjoy the maze, even when we mess up.

Sometimes the candle burns all the way to the end.  Sometimes a candle goes out but can reignite at a different time, and perhaps many times over.

These little flickers of light, while not themselves the light that we hope is at the end, comfort us, remind us, and give us a little taste of that overwhelming, beautiful, radiant light that we faithfully anticipate together.  We must remind each other of that light.  We must revel together in the thought of that light.  But we must not settle for the current, tiny, albeit immediate light that is one another, and lose sight of that light that we cannot see, but which has been promised to us.

This tunnel is dark, damp, confusing, with scary sounds resounding against the walls, with dangers and obstacles to overcome.  But how much joy a little candle in the hand, with wax dripping, warming and hardening all over it, can bring.