This week we are looking at love within friendship. Love is never easy regardless of what kind it is, love takes work and time and humility. The people who can hurt us most are the people we love most.
The St Francis prayer says it best "Help me to love, not to be loved". It is very easy in friendship to love only as much as you are loved. It is very easy to feel resentful if you believe that you are bringing more to the relationship that the other person is.
Agape is the strongest love there is, it is unconditional. Jesus loved us with Agape love, He gave us more that we can ever give Him and He did it anyway even though many will never appreciate His dying on a cross.
How to be a good friend? Appreciate your friends whether they can buy you a lobster dinner or be a listening ear over cheese sandwiches in their kitchen. Be kind to your friends, even when....especially when they are not being kind to you at the moment, they may be going through something and feel safe with you.
Apologize, we often take our friends' forgiveness for granted, I know I do, so always be ready to ask for that forgiveness when we know we should.
Be ready to correct without judging, it is very hard to tell our friends that they are doing something wrong, heading in the wrong direction but it is more loving to do than not to do. Sure you may lose that friend temporarily or permanently but it better than to sit idly by while that friend slowly destroys them-self or their soul. It is not loving to try to keep a friendship by saying nothing. It will be hard but it is worth it in the end.
Loving a friend is not easy, there are many times when it will hurt but there are also joys, who else will remember your inappropriate love for soft pretzels and mustard, hate it and still go out to get you some when you are having a bad day.
Check out Morgan for the link up and what everyone else has to say.
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