Beware of the "What People." They're among us. You probably know some of them. At times, you may even be tempted to be one of them. If you see one coming, it's best to go inside and lock your doors and windows until they go away. The What People are nothing but trouble.

Who are the What People? They are the ones who talk and act as if happiness has more to do with what you have—good looks, nice clothes, the latest gadget—than who you are. Wear the wrong brand of sneaker or the wrong jacket or—heaven forbid!—find yourself with a zit on your face and suddenly you're on the outside looking in—among What People.

Probably you are already finding out that people who like you for what you own tend to make pretty lousy friends. Forming a real friendship with someone—liking that person for who he or she truly is and knowing the person feels the same about you—takes a lot more work and time.

God knows what it takes to build a good relationship, because he made a commitment to be a real friend to you and to me long before we were born. In one way or another, each book of the Bible reveals just how wonderful a friend God has always been to the human race.

The story of this special friendship—which is one way that covenant can be defined—is the theme that ties together all the books of the Old Testament. Covenant friendship is the reason for all the marvelous things God does through Jesus in the New Testament.

In this Youth Update, you'll gain a new understanding of this Covenant friendship with God and learn how you can make your own friendships strong, deep and faithful as well. Friendships like this go far beyond the boundaries that What People have set up. In a friendship modeled on your friendship with God, Who is the big concern, the big question.

Call Me

Many of those people you consider your good friends now probably were strangers to you a few years ago. In some cases, you can probably remember getting to know the person as the two of you began your high school careers as slightly—or greatly—intimidated high school freshmen. Before you can form a friendship with someone, you have to meet him or her.

This is the first stage in the Covenant relationship given to us in the Bible, with one big difference. The words that God says to the prophet Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" (1:5), God says to each of us.

There is no need for you to introduce yourself to God. He knows you better than you even know yourself. He continually calls each one of us, however, to get to know him better. Sometimes the pictures in our heads of what God is like can get in the way of really experiencing God, the ultimate Who person.

For Abraham, this happens when God calls him out of his homeland to come to the land of Canaan—the "Promised Land" of the Bible (Genesis 12:1). For Moses, it happens when he comes away from a burning bush with a mission from God to lead the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt (Exodus 3). For Isaiah, it happens when he simply says: "Here I am....send me" (Isaiah 6).

Like Abraham and Moses, important events will happen (have already happened, no doubt!) in your life. Through and in such events, God is inviting you to a deeper friendship and waiting for your response.

Faithful Friends

Think about your "best friends." Someone—even several people—probably come immediately to mind. You have met quite a few people in your life so far, but most of them you would not count among your closest friends.

Calling someone your best friend says much more than saying you like the person. A best friend is someone who knows you better than other people do. A best friend is one of the major Who People in your life. You know that he or she will always stand by you and you will always stand by that friend.

There's a word in Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, that refers to this special bond which exists between best friends: hesed (heh SAID). A word the writers of the books of the Old Testament often use, hesed describes the unshakable love and faithfulness of God toward his people.

As the Bible tells the story, the people of Israel experience the joy of freedom as they escape from slavery in Egypt in the Book of Exodus and find great prosperity and security under Kings David and Solomon (2 Samuel; 1 Kings 1—11). They suffer the pain of a family divided as the Kingdom of Israel breaks in two under the rule of Solomon's son (1 Kings 12). And they are overwhelmed with grief when invading armies from Assyria and Babylon, two superpowers of the ancient Middle East (2 Kings 17; 25) devastate their homeland. Yet whatever they gain or lose, they never lose the experience of God's hesed.

Care Without Limit

After Israel became a great kingdom under David, a storyteller wrote down the tale of two young widows and their widowed mother-in-law. The relationship that develops between the older woman, Naomi, and her daughter-in-law Ruth—for whom the book is named—may be the Old Testament's most beautiful illustration of what Covenant hesed is all about.

Naomi, her husband and her two sons are forced to move out of their Jewish homeland because they can't get enough to eat. They go across the Jordan River to the east and find a new home in the land of Moab. While Naomi and her family are living there, Naomi's husband dies and her two sons marry Moabite women, Ruth and Orpah. Later, the two sons die also.

Women in biblical times were not allowed to go to school, or to work, or to control any wealth. The future of these three widows, therefore, looks grim. Naomi decides she must go back to her hometown of Bethlehem in the hope that she will find compassionate relatives to take care of her. She knows, however, that it will be almost impossible for Ruth and Orpah to find new husbands. (Jews did not marry outsiders.)

Naomi loves her daughters-in-law and wants them to have a chance to marry again. As they walk along the road toward Bethlehem, she tearfully and bravely bids them good-bye (see Ruth 1:11-13): "Go back, my daughters!....Why should you come with me? Have I other sons in my womb who may become your husbands?" Sobbing, Orpah kisses Naomi and turns back toward Moab. Ruth stays put.

Naomi becomes distraught: "See now!" she says, "your sister-in-law has gone back to her people....Go back after your sister-in-law!" Ruth responds with words that capture the essence of what Covenant friendship means: "Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you! For wherever you go I will go, wherever you [live] I will [live], your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there be buried" (1:15-17).

Have you ever had a moment when you felt alone, or made such a terrible mistake that you were sure no one was ever going to talk to you again? Perhaps you dropped all your books and stuff in the middle of a crowded stairwell. Or you told a whopper of a lie and got caught in it. Then someone—maybe your best friend, your mom or dad, your brother or sister—made you see that he or she cared about you as much as ever.

Then you know how Naomi must have felt. You have also had a taste of what living in a Covenant relationship with God is like. In relationships between Who People, the mutual care and concern upon which that friendship is built have no limits.

La Vida Covenant

Loving without limits comes naturally for God, but isn't always easy for us. The closer you are to someone, and the more that person comes to depend on you, the more it hurts when one friend lets down another.

If a stranger in your lunch period makes fun of you, you may be embarrassed or angry for a minute. If your best friend says something mean to you, or if you say something mean to your friend, the hurt can last a long time. One hurt can quickly lead to another.

Sometimes it's hard to figure out what living in Covenant means, and it can seem almost impossible to live that way. According to the Book of Exodus, after the Hebrew people escape from slavery in Egypt they begin a journey through the deserts of the Sinai Peninsula on their way to the Promised Land. They have plenty of time to think about all that has happened, and about how much God has done for them. The people want to respond to God's love by loving him in return.

This often proved to be easier said than done. Just like you, they didn't always feel particularly loving or grateful, even though they knew they should be. The desert was hot; food and water were a constant concern. They became angry with one another and even with God. (Read the story in Exodus 15—19.)

Sometimes they struggled mightily not to become What People themselves as they began to envy the good life enjoyed by their masters back in Egypt. If you've ever found yourself wishing you were part of the "cool crowd" even though you know coolness is often based on things that don't really matter much, then you know how the Hebrew people felt.

To the Rescue

God understood that the Hebrew people were only beginning to experience the hesed of Covenant, just as he understands that you and I are learning more each day about what being a good friend means. So God gave his people the Ten Commandments as a guide and a reminder that God would always be with them (see Exodus 20).

One high school student put it this way: "The commandments are an 'Idiot's Guide to Being Best Friends With God.' As we experience the hesed of Covenant for ourselves, we realize that the things people have don't matter, but what we do for them does. What better response to God's unconditional love could there be than to love those around us—people God already loves?"

When we look at the Ten Commandments this way, we begin to see that they aren't just a checklist of what not to do. Following the Ten Commandments leads us deeper and deeper into a Covenant relationship with God and with one another. Good deeds are our response to God's love which we come to experience more and more powerfully in our hearts.

The prophet Jeremiah beautifully captures this process of incorporating the Command-ments into our lives when he speaks about a "new covenant" written by God within our hearts (31:31-34). And Jesus understood that a person who lived out the Commandments—and the Covenant—would see clearly that loving God and one another without limit means loving even our enemies (see Matthew 5:43-48).