"And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. Then they all wept freely, and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spoke, that they would see his face no more. And they accompanied him to the ship." (Acts 20:36-38)

I was an interior lineman, starting freshman. And I played every game for four years without a serious injury. There were three other guys on the line that played with me almost the entire time. I can't tell you how much we loved each other. We won; we lost; we helped each other through injuries, through good and bad romances, through studies. There wasn't anything we didn't do together. I could cry with those guys. And there wasn't anything we couldn't say to each other. I mean there were some times when we got good and mad at one another. And I'm thirty-eight. I'm still grieving. When football was over, and we said good-bye, it was like a death." (From When Men Think Private Thoughts, by Gordon MacDonald, p. 25)

The best ties of all are the ties that we have with fellow Christians. "Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love."