A Celebration of Friendship

By Helen Steiner Rice and Rebecca Currington Snapdragon Group

Celebrate your cherished friendships and experience new appreciation for those dear to your heart with this delightful gift book, featuring the popular verse of Helen Steiner Rice. Dozens of devotional readings are paired with inspirational poetry for a unique package that is sure to bring delight and warmth to your spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barbour Publishing
• Release date: Nov 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781620296240

Helen Steiner Rice

From the 1920s and beyond her death in 1981, Helen Steiner Rice has been an unofficial poet laureate of hope and optimism. Her books have sold more than seven million copies and comforted nations through some of history's darkest moments. There probably isn't a single American family today that hasn't sent or received a greeting card featuring Rice's work, and her writings continue to inspire a new generation online, in gift books, and through note cards.

Book preview

Prayer

Introduction

Who could imagine that our great and mighty God who created the entire universe would ever be interested in a simple concept like friendship? But He is! He has extended His hand of friendship to us and made it clear that He desires us to extend a hand of friendship to each other in return. His friendship is both a gift and a command—one we are privileged to accept and obey.

Friendship can be hard work at times, but it is a sign of God’s presence in our lives. Friends teach us patience, tolerance, forgiveness, courage, and tenacity. They challenge us, inspire us, comfort us, affirm us, and hold our hands in tough times. They try hard to protect our feelings and yet are often the only ones who will tell us the truth. God uses our friends to help Him shape and mold us into the people He created us to be.

As you read through the pages of this book, we hope you will be inspired by the artistry and wisdom of the gifted poet Helen Steiner Rice. We have coupled each one of her beautiful poems with a devotional that we pray will draw you closer in friendship to our amazing God and the other friends He has placed in your life.

God bless you as we celebrate friendship together.

What Is Love?

What is love? No words can define it—

It’s something so great only God could design it.

Wonder of wonders, beyond man’s conception—

And only in God can love find true perfection …

For love means much more than small words can express,

For what man calls love is so very much less

Than the beauty and depth and the true richness of

God’s gift to mankind of compassion from above.

For love has become a word that’s misused,

Perverted, distorted, and often abused,

To speak of light romance or some affinity for,

A passing attraction that is seldom much more

Than a mere interlude of inflamed fascination,

A romantic fling of no lasting duration …

But love is enduring and patient and kind—

It judges all with the heart, not the mind …

And love can transform the most commonplace

Into beauty and splendor and sweetness and grace …

For love is unselfish, giving more than it takes—

And no matter what happens, love never forsakes.

It’s faithful and trusting and always believing,

Guileless and honest and never deceiving.

Yes, love is beyond what man can define,

For love is immortal, and God’s gift is divine!

Friendship is Love

Friends Are Life’s Gift of Love

If people like me didn’t know people like you,

Life would lose its meaning and its richness, too …

For the friends that we make are life’s gift of love,

And I think friends are sent right from heaven above …

And thinking of you somehow makes me feel

That God is love and He’s very real.

~HSR

Faces in the Crowd

These God-chosen lives all around—what splendid friends they make!

PSALM 16:3 MSG

Have you ever stopped to imagine how many people cross your path in the course of a year? Not just the ones you recognize or even the ones you notice, but all the people you encounter? The young mother who passes you in the supermarket aisle with her two little ones in tow. Or the woman sitting in the next chair at the hair salon, casting a timid smile your way. How about the man who delivers your mail or fixes your car or briefly passes you on the street? The number is probably astronomical. Most of these chance encounters are easily forgotten within a few moments—if remembered at all.

But now and then you look up and see instant recognition in the eyes of a stranger. Soon that stranger becomes a friend. What makes that person stand out from the teeming sea of people you pass by each day? The answer could well be the hand of