Our family recently said goodbye to Max, my cousin, who after a full year of working at an English institute for children, went back home. The kids and I miss him already. He was here for many a weekend and almost every long weekend on the Korean calendar. It was a blessing to have him here. I cooked a lot. Boy, could he ever eat! The boys enjoyed the silly games he played, his knowledge or computer games, his willingness to go for walks, and his love of anything fun. Somewhere along the line, he became 'Uncle Max'. He got a special place at the end of the dining room table, and we learned to pull out his favorite blankets before he arrived. A have a wonderful mosaic of pictures in my mind of his time here. He became someone who is more than a cousin. He became family.
Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter:
whoever find one has found a treasure.
Faithful friends are beyond price:
no amount can balance their worth.
Faithful friends are life-saving medicine;
and those who fear the Lord will find them.
Those who fear the Lord direct their friendship aright,
for as they are, so are their good neighbors also.
- Sirach 6:14-17
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
- John 3:16