Father, you bless us with friends and neighbors, with a network of people in our lives, who enrich us and provide us with roots. Even more, you give us a family in the faith who keep us pointed toward you and toward eternity and provide us with love and support and discipline.
We are grateful to be a part of a community and to be born into the spiritual family of Christ.
It is good to have friends and greater still to be a friend of yours and of the Lord Jesus.
Let this latter friendship be what is most important to me, for it is what lasts beyond this life.
Help me to share this priority of life with those who are friends and neighbors, that they too might share in this best and richest of relationships.