Making Friends

Making Friends
by Samuel Lee Frank on Friday, July 15, 2011 at 12:44pm.

Our relationships, both good and bad, are like a garden. Some things have to be tended to to be their best. Tended carefully and consistantly, they will flourish and produce fruit and seed into future generations. Ignored, and unattended, they will die or go to seed and their usefullness and beauty is lost, although the plant is still there. True frienships are GROWN, NURTURED, and VALUED. They take time.
All relationships are not good, and this is normal to the human experience. I have relationships with various types of weeds. They range from encroaching grass, to the noxious, rash-inducing variety. The typical treatment for them is to give them as much attention as the good plants by constantly pulling, digging, and spraying to get rid of them. Since weeds all start with seeds, the best treatment is to go to Home Depot and get a bottle of "pre-emergent" granules and blend it into the soil so that the seeds of weeds cannot sprout in the first place. They rot and die. Healthy plants are not affected.

Bad relationships are inevitable. How much influence they have over us is up to us. These can range from simply annoying, to toxic and abusive. Some bad relationships need to be severed completely. Some need to be destroyed at the roots, and others can be ignored and they will go to seed and die. Our good relationships, beginning with God, will act as a "pre-emergent" and keep these bad ones at bay or at a minimum.