My dad has many times said “Relationships drive specificity.”
I’ve seen many people try to develop relationships quickly. They want to tell you their life story. Spend lots of time with you. And it seems like many times these relationships end up blowing up in people’s faces. People are trying to get too specific too fast. It’s much easier to not be careful with others and no longer be edifying or encouraging one another when you’re around each other too much. “Familiarity breeds contempt.”
Proverbs 25:17 Seldom set foot in your neighbor’s house, Lest he become weary of you and hate you.
Relationships do have to mature. As you spend years with people, the relationships are able to handle more. You start with a twine, but over the years as you add more twine, it becomes a rope and eventually becomes strong enough to handle most things.
It’s over many years that you learn who a person truly is. Unless you can see where a person is going over years of time, you’re not going to know who they are. Even if you spend tons of times with someone over several months or so you’re only going to see a small part of their path. They might be in a really bad part of their life for those several months. Or be in a really good place headed in a bad direction.
We’re very weak with relationships. Around 50% of people who have been married have been divorced at least one time. We just aren’t able to handle these relationships without a lot of time and love.
People are delicate. Let’s be careful with them.
P.S.
I’ve found one thing you need to watch especially with your own family is being edifying and encouraging. It’s easy to be pleasant and nice with the rest of the world while at the same time taking out your negativity and crankiness on the people in your family.
Shouldn’t it be the most important to us to build up those who are closest to us?
