Recently, I had four of my closest friends over to my house for a weekend (along with their two spouses and two dogs, it was a full house, and loads of fun). We spent the weekend playing board games for, quite literally, sixteen hours (it was probably more than that, but I wasn’t timing). Now, my house has the room space for this kind of shindig – kind of. I had one friend who was crashed on my sofa, but everyone else had their own room and bed/air mattress.

These friends know me fairly well. I’ve lived with them, gotten angry at them, laughed until I cried with them, and been my most ridiculous with them. One of them even tried to choke me one time (I must admit, I had asked him too). The level of intimacy we have with one an other is incredible, and it’s honestly why I value their friendships so much. (That, and the fact that they simply know too much about me, and it takes too long to break in a new set of friends).

In the Bible, David and Jonathon had, arguably, the most intimate friendship we see in the text. They “knit their lives together”. They shared their lives with each other, including their privileges, strengths, and weaknesses. David and Jonathon had a genuine friendship, one that, at times, was likely too close for comfort.

We need people in our lives who are too close for comfort. These are people who can take us at our worst. They’re also people who want us to be our best. These are people you can laugh yourself into tears with, and who you can call when things go wrong in life.

Who do you have in your life, other than a spouse, who is too close for comfort?