Mending and Fixing

by Nick Cleveland

So yesterday a student came into my office and met with me. It was just a check up on how she was doing spiritually. She had an agenda with three things she wanted to talk about. The second one was so encouraging I just had to share it. She was on one of our summer trips and had shared with our group about a broken friendship and some of the pain and struggle associated with it. She told me this week that she so badly wanted to make it right after the mission trip, but didn’t. Then she went on the Strongsville trip two weeks ago and on Sunday, when she returned home, was determined to finally do something about this broken friendship. She called her friend (also in our group) and they had dinner. This girl proceeded to tell me that she apologized for all the pain she had caused her friend (and was embarrassed at how she wasn’t even able to recall all the things she had done). The other girl accepted the apology and then went on to apologize for her pain she had caused in the friendship.

Sounds like a typical restoration, right? Not so fast, my friend. You see they didn’t get up from dinner and go back to being BFF’s. Instead they made what I thought was a mature decision. It was the decision to live at peace together, but not try to become best friends…at least not right now. Maybe down the road, but not right now. It encouraged me that students would follow the conviction and prompting of the Holy Spirit of God to “live at peace” and let others know we know Him by our love!

That’s our message anyway isn’t it? Restored relationships – a restored relationship with God and others!