{"id":2216,"date":"2017-02-09T17:34:30","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T00:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/?p=2216"},"modified":"2017-02-10T05:55:43","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T12:55:43","slug":"fighting-for-old-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=2216","title":{"rendered":"Worth the Fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It was C\u2019s birthday\u2014last Friday when Charlotte and I ate with two of our favorite couples. C and S and S and L have been our friends for at least 40 years.<\/p>\n

They represent a group I\u2019ll call my FCM-PCC-EFC friends\u2014the initials coming from three church homes we shared in the \u201870s and \u201880s. With each congregation came a time of joy and rich friendships, followed by disagreement, then dissension, then division, a phenomenon all too common in churches today.<\/p>\n

But that statement is a bit misleading. It\u2019s not just \u201ctoday.\u201d Read your New Testament. The early church did the same thing over 2000 years ago, and it survived.<\/p>\n

Because with time, and some maturing, folks learn that love and forgiveness trump bitterness and grudges. Not that the disagreements are always solved. I suppose Paul and Barnabas disagreed over John Mark until the day they died, but they respected and supported each other anyway.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been one of the blessings of growing older\u2014reconnecting with folks we loved, but for one reason or another, separated from for a time (with these friends, it was my fault not theirs; unshared feelings go unaddressed and unredressed).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not Pollyannish about this; some disagreements (a minority) are worth the division, and some dissensions won\u2019t be mediated until Heaven\u2014when our Heavenly Father has a sit-down with each of us.<\/p>\n

That said\u2014old friends are worth fighting for. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was C\u2019s birthday\u2014last Friday when Charlotte and I ate with two of our favorite couples. C and S and S and L have been our friends for at least 40 years. They represent a group I\u2019ll call my FCM-PCC-EFC friends\u2014the initials coming from three church homes we shared in the \u201870s and \u201880s. With […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2216"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2223,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2216\/revisions\/2223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}