One of my good friends at university was a diminutive, beautiful Geordie. We had many hilarious adventures during our years at St. John’s College in Durham. She was with me on some of the most memorable occasions of my life; the time that we had 55 people folded into our bedroom for coffee, the elaborate treasure hunt some friends organised for my 21st, where I was dared to dress as an old woman and open a bank account in Lloyds bank (achieved) the awful moment when the full paddling pool in the corner of my bedroom burst, sending a pool of water into the newly-painted full lecture theatre below- (don’t begin to ask me WHY I had a paddling pool in my room, or why it was full!!)
She was a riot and I’d never had a friend like her. The most important person in her life was her Grandpa. He had been the only stable influence on her as a child. After he died, in what I think was our third year, something changed in her. Mourning her loss greatly, she sought solace in a boyfriend, not me.

I thought we would never lose touch, but I was wrong. We drifted apart and by the last year, hardly saw each other at all. During our friendship, she came to a number of Bible studies I ran for interested friends. It was her idea to learn a one of the verses off by heart. The one she chose was this:

“The arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear.”
(Isaiah 59:1)

She and three other young, bright athiest students learnt this verse. Bizarrely, they used to say it loudly around college as a kind of chant in a funny accent… I didn’t care- at least they knew it off by heart.
I woke up today with this verse in my head and remembered her and the others in that Bible study. I got quite emotional thinking of her, of all she struggled with on her own and the great fun we shared. I began praying that she one day finds the truth of that verse for herself.
You may be the only Christian some of your friends ever meet. Should your friendship ever change, have you left them with enough to seek God on their own? It’s a sobering thought. The arm of the Lord is long. I pray it somehow supernaturally reaches my old friend today- wherever she is.