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jn_en_2009_06_26

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Friendship V - Open Space.

Friday, June 26, 2009. Today I would like to talk about the color green and what it can mean for friendship. This is part of our little idea to look at the levels of friendship or the “spectral colors” of friendship. I use these colors as an image. I do not think that color symbolism has any deep meaning in addition to the fact that humans see colors and use colors to express their feelings. However, colors can be part of powerfull images.

Green is the color of life, the color of hope, the color of nature. Green is the color which has a future. For me green is also the color of space, of open space. It is the color of freedom, the color of options which can be explored. With all these points green is an important color for friendship.

Friendship needs open space. Friendship needs freedom. When you want to build up a true friendship, this does not go together with control or manipulation. Friendship needs to take the other person serious with its past and with its future. When we take a person serious we need to accept its freedom. In fact we need to support and give freedom to our friend. It is not only an acceptance, but it is an integral and active part of the relationship. We want freedom for our friends to develop, to prosper, to evolve their ideas, their preferences, their talents and gifts.

Freedom does not mean that we would have to give up our own preferences. We should have our own ideas about how things should work, that is perfectly ok, that is even necessary. Our own self-confidence is reflected into the self-confidence of our friends. The weaker we are the weaker will our friendship be. We want strong and well-developed partners as friends. We want to be reliable and strong friends to them.

It is highly interesting to think about this freedom in our friendship with God and with Jesus. God is a very strong friend, who has quite detailed ideas about life. God is a holy character, full of purity and dedication. He somehow makes a perfect friend. And he wants to generate freedom for us. The freedom we are talking about here is not the freedom to do evil, to hurt other people or to cause damage. It is the freedom to make important choices. It is the freedom to prosper. It is the freedom to learn all the important things of life. God is creating a wide and open space for us. He is tearing down the walls of our mind, the walls of our heart and the walls which surround our life in terms of options and possibilities. [R.W.E.P., jesusnetwork.eu]

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