Friends, forever!

Have you ever developed a friendship, only to find out later that your friend has moved on to bigger and better things, including you?

I’m sure most of us have experience that.

The problem is, some people treat friends like a commodity. And, like any other commodity that friendship wears out. Disillusionment follows, and sometimes bitterness, even hatred. It has always amazed me that a couple can be madly in love, and then end up in divorce--or contantly fighting like cats and dogs. Why is that?

The truth of the matter is that they really did not know each other, or over time one or both of them people change.
Sometimes one grows, while the other remains the high school jock he always was. Our interest change, also. Travel is a big factor in a missionaries life. Talking about the price of pork bellies and rise and fall of soy bean prices may interest Billy Bob Farmer, your old 4H sidekick when you were growing up in Podunk Hollow, as I did; but when you’ve traveled around the world more times than you can count (or at least it seems so) things like that just don’t make for a good conversation topic anymore. That doesn’t mean that you don’t like Old Billy Bob; it just means that you now have very little in common.

So, what’s the point in all this rambling?

The point is, we need to examine our friendships in light of all of these factors. It just may be that he or she was not the friend you thought you had.

Now, I’m not talking about the fellow that keeps looking over your shoulder at church council to see if he can spot someone with just a little more influence than you have so he can strike up a conversation with them. People like that are not friends, they’re opportunists. So, what is there to examine there?

Here are some tips on friendship that I have gleaned down through the years:

 Friends are upfront with you. They tell you what they think.
 Friends may disagree, but they are not disagreeable.
 Friends don’t hold grudges. Not even secret ones.
 Friends never take advantage of your friendship.
 Friends never impose on you.
 Friends never talk about you behind your back.
 Friends never expect too much from you.
 Friends confide in you.
 Friends never break trust.
 Friends stick up for you when you are right, and remind you when you are wrong.
 Friends accept your spouse as part of the package in your friendship.
 Friends are not jealous of your other friends.
 Friends are not envious of your success or critical of your failures.

There are many more, but lastly I would like to mention that good friendships are cultivated and work on. Can you think of more?