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From the Reverend Kate Bottley:

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Like thousands of others across the country on a Saturday morning my husband Graham likes to run 5 kilometres with complete strangers in a park. I say strangers, it seems to me many of them how now become friends. They often go for coffee and cake afterwards or meet up in the week for extra training sessions, it’s quite the little community. And because I’m never one to miss out I sometimes tag along too, not to run, but to walk our dog Buster.

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The other day while Graham ran and I ambled, I met a panicked looking woman who introduced herself as Rene, she was walking through the woods scanning the ground and behind her, looking more than a little sheepish, was her husband and a small dog. ‘Have you seen a car key?’ she asked ‘He’s lost it’. I thought it best to help. We looked together but to no avail, the best I could do was offer them all a lift home to pick up their spare.

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As we drove, of course ,we chatted and found that we had a fair amount in common, as well as not living very far from one another, Rene’s ‘careless with keys’ husband was also called Graham, he also played the violin, we knew some of the same people, they were both big Radio 2 fans and bizarrely their gorgeous little dog was called Buster too. What started out as an encounter with strangers had quickly become a flourishing new friendship.

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Jesus knew the importance of friends and while the disciples often fell short of expectations, it was that circle of friends that followed him in his mission and continued Jesus’ teaching after he was gone, Jesus trusted them with his life’s work and the job of spreading his message of love across the world, a message that’s still being talked about today.

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Some friends are for life, others are just for a little bit. But no matter how long the friendship lasts, once upon a time, not so long ago, the friends we now have were strangers we had yet to encounter. I’m not sure if Graham and Rene and the other Buster are my new best friends, probably not, but it’s nice to know on my next walk in the park there’ll be a familiar face.

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