Friendship During COVID

I don’t know how many of you have had the opportunity to attend a wedding during COVID but they’re strange affairs. Much smaller than usual due to restrictions on public gatherings. All the guests in masks. Awkward talk with other guests at your table even more awkward because of the masks. 

I’ve had the privilege of officiating a wedding during COVID, and despite all the hassles and hardships, there’s something powerful and beautiful about a wedding being stripped down to its bare essentials. 

There’s a passage from Peter Rollins I like to use in my wedding ceremonies. I’ve used it for a couple of the weddings I’ve done here at Catalyst. Pete asks us to imagine the scores of people we see everyday (of course this was pre-pandemic). How we don’t really see the vast majority of the people we encounter every day. They’re background noise. 

What makes us special isn’t that we’re all that different from every other beautiful, unique snowflake in the world. It’s that someone loves us. 

Love, according to Pete, is what enables us to see. When I love you, I truly see you. Love draws you out of the endless sea of others. 

Love notices. Love sees. Love is intentional. 

That is true of romantic love, but it’s also true of love in general. Love takes intention. 

Intention is something that, for a lot of us, has been in short supply during COVID. Our relationships have taken a big hit. 

God moves toward us with intention, lifting us up and out of the sea of indifference to choose us as God’s own children!

Join us Sunday as we explore intentional friendship in the midst of a pandemic.