{"id":1540,"date":"2006-11-17T02:10:44","date_gmt":"2006-11-17T02:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/my-friends.html"},"modified":"2006-11-17T02:10:44","modified_gmt":"2006-11-17T02:10:44","slug":"my-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/my-friends.html","title":{"rendered":"My friends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The psalmist declares his friends: &#8220;your decrees (<em>edah<\/em>) are my delight (<em>shashua<\/em>), my intimate companions (<em>enosh etsah<\/em>) &#8212; my friends who counsel me&#8221; (119:24). <!--more|inline--><br \/>\nAgain, the psalmist speaks from experience: his friends are the words of God; they are the ones who accompany him everywhere he goes; they are the ones who are whispering in his ears about what to do; they are the ones to whom he listens.<br \/>\nDoesn&#8217;t take much imagination here: if you know someone well, you know how they think and what they would say in each experience in life. That, for the psalmist, is what God&#8217;s decrees\/God&#8217;s words are like: they are his best friends, his most loyal counselors, his steady companions.<br \/>\nWhen his opponents sought counsel with one another, he sought counsel with the decrees of God.<br \/>\nIf you&#8217;ve ever heard Fernando Ortega&#8217;s song about traveling the roads of New Mexico, he speaks of his friends as the columbine and the streams and the stars. Always with him. They lead him home. Don&#8217;t know the name of the song; but I like it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The psalmist declares his friends: &#8220;your decrees (edah) are my delight (shashua), my intimate companions (enosh etsah) &#8212; my friends who counsel me&#8221; (119:24).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psalm-119"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>My friends - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/my-friends.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My friends - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The psalmist declares his friends: &#8220;your decrees (edah) are my delight (shashua), my intimate companions (enosh etsah) &#8212; my friends who counsel me&#8221; (119:24).\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/my-friends.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-11-17T02:10:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"xscot mcknight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"My friends - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/my-friends.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"My friends - Jesus Creed","og_description":"The psalmist declares his friends: &#8220;your decrees (edah) are my delight (shashua), my intimate companions (enosh etsah) &#8212; my friends who counsel me&#8221; (119:24).","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/my-friends.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2006-11-17T02:10:44+00:00","author":"xscot mcknight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/my-friends.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/my-friends.html","name":"My friends - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-11-17T02:10:44+00:00","dateModified":"2006-11-17T02:10:44+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/my-friends.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/my-friends.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/my-friends.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"My friends"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0","name":"xscot mcknight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","caption":"xscot mcknight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/xscot-mcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}