BND

Originally published 6/17/16

Brotherhood Never Dies

Fourteen Years.

It has been fourteen years since the beginning of one of my most treasured and longest lasting friendships, of which J1 (peep his appearance in the first draft though!) is a core part.

Just yesterday I saw one of the other guys important to that group, who, let me just break my own rules now, I’ll mention is named Josh. And to break more rules, J1 is actually my best friend friend Junn, whom I call Louie. These two join the group of brothers with whom I have been privileged to share the unbreakable bond of brotherhood. Josh, Louie, and my friend John seem to be the core group of best friends I spent so much of my first years with as a believer in Christ. We were blessed to add on more friends, whom I cannot forget were named Jon-Bert or JB, Deanley, Gabe, and Jason.

Anyways I saw Josh yesterday after it had been at least a year, when I visited his family’s restaurant. I simply passed by because I had a job in his city for the day, but I greeted him and his family with love, and was so graciously met with the same and more, as they fed me a full meal free of charge. Isn’t it neat?

The point is, Josh is at least 50 miles from me. The distances that have separated all of us in this circle range from 50 miles to 100. To put it in a Californian’s perspective, that’s at least an hour and a half to two hours worth of driving one way, without traffic. And if you haven’t encountered at least Southern California’s traffic (particularly Los Angeles), then I welcome you to try driving in it for a week and see if your sanity is still in place.

No kidding.

The bigger point is that, even with all of us 20+ year-olds literally getting our careers and lives together from finding a school to attending school to job searching to settling down ready to find a wife (with one even getting married in less than half a year!), our brotherhood has never passed or even faded. It has stood the tests of fighting for the same girl, getting into petty and seemingly useless arguments, violent wrestling literal or figurative, and all kinds of differences that could separate anyone. We have gone through threats tears and trials alike and again, the central thing, evident in my own life, that keeps us together is Jesus Christ himself.

Each of us has been founded on the Word of God for these fourteen years and regardless of the progress of each of our lives and walks, the central theme is still Christ. He brings us together and even when the initially cohesive bond of friendship fades from either lost time or any other conditional aspect, the unconditional love Christ showed each of us has reminded us that we need to maintain this love that Jesus taught his disciples to show to one another.

And that is what I love most about this brand of brotherhood. It doesn’t fade. If it is biblical, it lasts for an eternity, since it bonds men together to invest in things eternal rather than temporal, and passes all kinds of boundaries we consciously or unconsciously set for each other.

This leads me to find such brotherhoods like these with relative ease, thanks to God’s grace. Because the premise is his grace, it’s easier to build on and easier to bond. With this, everywhere God has placed me there have been brothers he’s sent to be disciples with. Guys like my best friend Chris, whom I have learned many lessons from the past four years, Eman, Ian, Dex, Joey, my Kuya (or older brother in Filipino) AJ, Kuya Jan, Nelson, Francis, Michael, Kaleb, Carlo, and Daryl, just to name a few, have become part of the bigger picture in my life that is Christian brotherhood.

So whether or not time, distance or personal issues separate us, I am eternally grateful to be walking through life with people who have invested so much in my own and have been open for me to invest in them respectively. I know that our diversity alone, among millions of other reasons, can cause friction and even division, but I am confident that if we continue with effort to fear God and live life by his Word and will with confidence and contentment in Christ alone, with wisdom to find a healthy balance of investing time effort and finances, we can nurture an unbreakable bond that transcends all barriers.

Because of this, I know now that in Christ, brotherhood never dies.

@a Starbucks in West Covina, CA, @ my bros Joey and Chris’ study sesh