My first prophetic friend was Kate, a college classmate, who was Mennonite and pure in heart. She rebuked me for tampering with prices at a book sale we were organizing together. I had thought it didn’t really matter that I lowered the price of a book by a couple of bucks so that I could buy it later at a discount. She noticed, and she didn’t approve. I mostly shrugged it off, but for months afterward, I had little stabs of regret. She is a brilliant epidemiologist now and probably doesn’t think about me at all. Yet, her willingness to see and speak at the time shaped my character more than she realized.

I have been blessed with a few friends who speak into my circumstances with what I can only call divine insight.