In The Atlantic, Julie Beck takes an interesting look at how friendships change in adulthood. "As people enter middle age, they tend to have more demands on their time, many of them more pressing than friendship. After all, it's easier to put off catching up with a friend than it is to skip your kid's play or an important business trip." William Rawlins says about this change, "The real bittersweet aspect is young adulthood begins with all this time for friendship, and friendship just having this exuberant, profound importance for figuring out who you are and what's next. And you find at the end of young adulthood, now you don't have time for the very people who helped you make all these decisions." Beck concludes, "It's sad, sure, that we stop relying on our friends as much when we grow up, but it allows for a different kind of relationship, based on a mutual understanding of each other's human limitations. It's not ideal, but it's real …"

Possible Preaching Angle:

So bittersweet and so true, and yet you have to wonder if we were made for something more, a deeper intimacy in a more real community. Good food for thought.