I’ve heard it said that you are the average of your five closest friends. Interesting idea to ponder. So, who are my five closest friends? What do they have in common with me? And why have they moved into that category? 

Conversely, why have I not been invited into friendship with some people? What is it about me that some don’t want me in their inner circle of friendship?

Now I recognize that we only have capacity for so many relationships. There is an outer circle of perhaps up to 150 people we know some things about, we recognize in social settings and could perhaps enjoy dinner with every few years. This circle continues to get smaller as we enjoy deeper connections. Yet at the core, it is probably only about 5 people that we have the time and mental capacity to have extremely deep friendships with.

So, if the number is limited, who will your friends be?

In the past month, I’ve started using the phrase “foggy friends” to talk about those that I desire to have closest to me, and in reality, I believe that these are the ones that are in my “inner circle”. 

When I first told my wife about this, I got a strange look. Perhaps this is your response. In some ways, foggy may imply lack of clarity, uncertainty.

Yet for me it is quite the opposite. It is all about living on mission. To have such a sense of the future, of where you need to be heading, of God calling you to something, and yet you have very little to go on in how to get there. Yet you are still willing to move ahead the 5 feet you can see in front of you and nothing more because of the fog. You believe that beyond the fog there is that place that you will get to, maybe in a week, or a month, or a year, or perhaps not even in your lifetime. But you are still willing to go there, and you are going to do it with your friends who also believe in it. Many around may question your sanity, but you know that you only need a few foggy friends who will continue to be your encouragement and sounding board.

Now I do know that we all have certain personalities, and that some of us are more apt to live in “the stretch” of the unknown. And yet, as I’ve travelled globally and engaged with Christians around the world of all different personalities, I’ve recognized more that my culture, and let me specifically talk about the church culture in general terms, does not want to live in the fog. They want plans and budgets and things all lined up – wait until the fog lifts – before moving forward, small and big things.

Yet if we are called to live by faith, we need to get used to the fog. 

Now I can look out and wonder why others aren’t living this way, but in reality I can do nothing about that. What I can do is choose how I am going to live.

So if I am the average of my 5 closest friends, and if I want to live by faith, not knowing fully how to get where I believe I’m called to go, then I want to make sure that I have foggy friends to do life with. How about you?

For the kingdom.