My Best Friend is a… Toothpick?
By Lisa Boyer
“As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.”
Proverbs 27:17 (NLT)
“The toothpick is your best friend,” the instructor announced at a cookie decorating get-together I attended with several other women from church. The toothpick? I thought to myself laughing, Boy, have I been looking for friends in the wrong place! But the instructor demonstrated her point and sent us off to decorate our cookies.
And she was right! After outlining the edges of the cookie with icing, I used a toothpick to spread the icing over the center of the cookie. With a toothpick, I was even able to get the icing into every corner. I also used a toothpick to remove icing that had dripped over the edge of the cookie - - that one wasn’t part of her instructions, but it worked nonetheless. And then I used a toothpick to draw the thin black lines of the bee flight pattern on my flower cookie, which, by the way, turned out rather cute! When it came to cookie decorating, the toothpick was indeed my best friend.
Of course, I prefer humans to toothpicks when it comes to friendship, but the statement did get me thinking…. God uses people in our lives in ways not dissimilar to how I used the toothpick on my cookies. God used Ananias and Barnabas, among others, to help transform Saul into Paul, who wrote several books of the Bible, and then He used Paul to shape Timothy and Titus!
I know that several people in my life have been like toothpicks directed by the hand of God as they played a significant role in how God has transformed my life. For example, some have spread God’s Word into my life, some have covered me with prayer, some have encouraged me to let God reach into the corners of my life that I’d kept from Him, some have spoken truth when I didn’t want to hear it but needed to, and some have helped scrape the sin out of my life.
I am so thankful for those precious “toothpick” friends that God has used to reshape my life. And I would be honored to be a “toothpick” in the lives of others, if God chooses to use me in that way!
GOING DEEPER:
1. Today, will you be a “toothpick” in the life of someone else by covering her in prayer?
2. Have you been resisting the changes that God has been moving you toward, even to the extent of pushing away the people He’s been using? Are you willing to stop and surrender your life completely to Him and His ways?
FURTHER READING:
I Thessalonians 4:1; Galatians 6:1; Acts 9:1-22
Lisa has been married to Ted for 19 years and they have two teenage sons. She is a leader for a Junior High girls’ small group at Oakwood Church.
