I've spent a lot of time lately thinking about human relationships, especially friendship. Today I came across a good description of relationship: "(It is) an ongoing conversation in which (two people) speak and listen...He takes care of her, and she takes care of him; they get cross, and time passes, and they talk it over, and the relationship emerges strengthened...It (the relationship) is justified by two people's desire to go on speaking with each other." (Barbara Ryan, author).
My husband's eighty-two year old aunt called me the other day. During our conversation she talked about the importance of being gentle, forgiving, and staying connected. "Sue, we're here to save souls, not destroy them." Her words affected me deeply.? Because I know that we can destroy the people around us without even being aware that certain things we say and do hurt them. I believe that we are here to make--and keep--connections with one another, and that in so doing, we save each other:
Christ?s love for Peter was so boundless that in loving Peter he accomplished loving the person one sees. He did not say, ?Peter must change first and become another man before I can love him again.? No, just the opposite, he said, ?Peter is Peter, and I love him; love, if anything, will help him to become another man.? Therefore he did not break off the friendship in order perhaps to renew it again when Peter had become another man. No, he preserved the friendship unchanged and in this very way helped Peter to become another man. Do you think that Peter would have been won again without this faithful friendship of Christ? But it is so easy to be a friend when it means nothing more than requiring something in particular from the friend, and if he does not respond to the demand, then to let the friendship go ? until it perhaps is renewed when he responds to the demand. Is this the relationship of friendship? Who is closer to helping an erring one than the person who calls himself a friend, even if the offence is committed against the friend! But the friend withdraws and says (yes, as if a third person were talking): when he has turned over a new leaf, he can perhaps become my friend again. And we human beings are not far from regarding even such behavior as highminded. But truly, one is far from being able to say of such a friend that in loving he loves the person he sees.Nowadays we hear a lot of talk about the power of forgiveness, yet very little about reconciliation. It seems to me that the two are the same in God's eyes. If we are to follow Christ as our example and "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matt 5:48), then how can we forgive without reconciling? Is this the kind of forgiveness that our Father extends to us? Does God forgive us but then exclude us from His presence and fellowship?? Of course not!? We know that forgiveness means that we are now friends with God. ?
?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ~From Works of Love, Chapter 4, by Soren Kierkegaard
Forgiveness means that there is no longer a barrier between us. It means we are re-connected.
(Likewise, I think that modern Christians have made a mistake in defining "justification" and "sanctification" as separate terms. Justify: to be declared right with God; Sanctify: to be made holy. Can a person be holy and not right with God? Can a person be right with God and not holy?)
We are taking a simple (yet difficult) faith and twisting it into a complicated mess. Thus, today we have people who say they forgive, but refuse to reconcile, and people who believe they are right with God,? but do not live holy lives.
Source: http://tea-and-c.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-spirit-of-friendship.html
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