Two days ago, I got to spend some time with some good friends at Buffalo Wild Wings watching the Cards game on FOX. It was quality programming, even if it did have a 3 1/2 hour rain delay. And we won!

At 7:30, I packed up my stuff and went to another friend’s house for the first time and did some reading for Church History. He has some of the same passions I do…we both nerd out on old books and love to talk about theology and liturgy. He and I talked about a wide variety of topics…and yes, we did study. But we had a great several hours to hang out and get to know each other better.

This kind of spending time is so important to me as a single person. It’s not good for any of us to be alone, but a marriage is not the only way to solve the problem of being alone. Instead, solid community can help fill the gap of loneliness I feel. Not only can it…it does.

This friend is incredibly talented…and it was so much fun to see what makes him tick, drink tea, talk about class and life, and just be with him. I’d be impoverished without the time I spent with him the other night.

He’s not the only friend I feel this way about…but he’s the most recent example. Maybe it was a big thing to him for me to be there…maybe small…maybe somewhere in between. I don’t know. But it was a big thing for me. And I’m grateful that seminary has given me a set of friends to invest in, love, pray for, and talk with.

My friends the other night lived in light of the Gospel for me last night. I was encouraged to trust Christ in my loneliness instead of seeking out less desirable ways of trying to meet that need for companionship. Maybe in some small way, I did the same for them.