Onward, Upward, and Further In

I think most of us want friends. We want enjoyable people to do life with. Someone to laugh with. Someone to adventure with. We want people to bond with, and share the ups and downs of life with. We want someone who will stick with us through thick and thin. But as we face the complexities of life and relationships, we can find that friendship is fragile and will break easily. Romans 12: 9-21 in particular teaches Christians how to love one another and how to love those in the world. It teaches us how to befriend one another (Let love be genuine...) and how to navigate the messy nature of relationships (bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse). Because they do get messy. There are many things that can harm or even kill friendship. In fact, just from this passage, I could identify many things, such as changing priorities, impatience, betrayal, hatred, selfishness, and on and on. However, I want to look at just two, those found in Romans 12:15: "Rejoice...