Friendship

I've found James K.A. Smith's book Letters to a Young Calvinist very helpful. Here's something he says about the importance of friendship:

...I've become convinced that perhaps nothing is so important for our walk with the Lord as good friends. I think God gives us good friends as sacraments - means of grace given to us as indices of God's presence and conduits for our sanctification. While 'there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother' (Prov. 18:24), that same Friend sends us friends to help make his presence tangible and concrete. Nothing continues the incarnation like Christian friendship."