{{2009_06_23_t1.jpg}} {{2009_06_23_t2.jpg}} {{2009_06_23_t3.jpg}} [[http://www.jesusnetwork.eu/de/doku.php/jn_de_2009_06_23|Deutsche Version]] [[Start|| Wiki Start]] [[topics_collection_i|| Topics Collection i ]] ======Friendship II - Understanding. ...====== Tuesday, June 23, 2009. We are talking about friendship this week in the C-Text Christian Blog. What is important in friendship? What is going on? Why is friendship so fantastic? {{2009_06_23.jpg }} First: I want to approach the meaning of friendship thinking about when I am a friend. You could think the other way around: what does it mean if someone is my friend. But I believe that this leads into the wrong direction! Friendship cannot be based on demands or ideas about how a friend should behave. If we start to move along this track, we are basically lost. We have lost friendship! We have started to be a dictator, a controler and manipulator. Friendship is not about claims and requirements! Let us talk about the layers of friendship. A physicist would call it the "spectral decomposition" of what it means to be a friend. Like the colors of light there are many colors in friendship. There is the the bright yellow light of common understanding. Somehow we cannot imagine friendship without understanding. If you do not understand someone, at least something what is important for him, how can you be his friend? If there is no common ground, how can friendship grow? With our natural friends we have found common ground of understanding. That was one of the key point which opened the doors for our friendship. But I am convinced that in principle friendship is possible between any two humans on this planet. The nice thing is that there is always common ground with another person - who ever it may be. There is always and with everyone a common ground! If you sincerely open your mind and heart for some person, you will find many things which are interesting, which are like things in your life! It does not need to be the friendship which has a common hobby. People can be extremely diverse. Yet, as humans we are prepared to be friends. We are prepared to find community. We are created to love each other - which includes friendship. The love which God asks us to develop, which he even commands us to live, needs common ground. And it is there. We all face the same fears and the same hopes. We all have similar needs. We all are made the same way, black and white people, those from the far east or the far west. {{ 2009_06_23_2.jpg}} Of course I am not in a friendship with everyone. I do neither have the time nor the capacity to do this. I need to be friend with some people, in the sense that I spend more time with them, that our common ground is broad and deep naturally. Friendship is not difficult then, it just flows. But on a second level I am a friend to many people around me who might have never realized how much a friend I am towards them. It is fantastic to be a friend for people. I like having thoughts full of good things, thoughts of friendship, thoughts of positive developments, of maturity, of blessings, of prosperity, truth, peace and life for the people which I see ... [[http://www.jesusnetwork.eu/en/doku.php/topics_collection_i|... more texts]]