it's true. Making friends is easy. Staying as friends is the hard part. I know some of you are disagreeing with me already. But the kind of friendship i'm referring to here are meaningful relationships. I don't know about you, but it is a hard lesson to learn for me.
I read somewhere that our capacity to maintain meaningful relationships have actually been a research topic, where the findings seemed to indicate that the we humans can only have on average of 6 meaningful relationships at any one time.
To simplify things, ask yourself, how many best/really good friends do you have? People you constantly care about. Some friends are "better" friends than others.. we're talking about the "better" ones. I think i fit into the average of 6. Especially now.
Yes yes.. i hear it again. You're not like that. We do try to kid ourselves sometimes. Good friends we can have aplenty. Care, i could give to many. But how many of them truly means the world to you. How many of them reciprocate that feeling. Ok.. maybe reciprocating is another issue, but it does not make a differences with our capacity.
All this translates our capacity to love. Sometime what we see as "love" is really limited. Drawing a border around it. Our willingness to love the beautiful, the complete. Sometimes we chose to love the people we can, or rather to chose to love the part of them that we can accept. Even in churches, a lot of people are doing it wrong. Having good intentions to love, but loving with their limited capacity.
I am guilty as charged. I told myself that it is just too tiring making new friends and making new friends really good friends. I already got enough friends to trouble me with maintenance, trying to keep those existing friendship from breaking up. (and a lot of them are already broken) Why would i in my right mind want to increase my problems?
Then again, like general revelations, my conscience is begging me to differ. Knowing well that this is the only real reason people don't stay in church. Because there is no meaningful relationship being built. Not before long.. the steam will run out. Christianity turns into a fad.
Meaningful relations in church stretches high and wide like the cross. First of all, a meaningful relation with our Father in heaven, through knowing Him and loving Him and feeling His love for us in return. Next, a meaningful relation with our brothers and sisters, through truly knowing them and loving them, and being loved in return. If i have not had these meaningful relationships, i think i will be gone as well.
But what about our limited capacity like i said before? Are we destined to love in small groups? How are we to overcome our incapacity? What about my no. 7 friend?
The answer is simple. We simply are drawing love from the wrong well. Loving with the love of Christ. Not with our own. Simply drawing from a never ending source, an all powerful love. We'll realise that there is no end or limit to how we love, who we love or why we love. We love because He first loved us. He did not see us for who we are, cos if He did, i definitely would not have found favor with Him.
A lesson that for sure i'll take my lifetime to learn. A lesson that is worth a lifetime as well.
May we learn to love out of our comfort, love more than the lovable people, love more than then beautiful one we see and even love those who hurt us before. For if God saw us for these, He wouldn't take a second look. More importantly, may we learn to lean on His love, for God is love and i love you because He loves you too.
