S2P6 – Sometimes it takes all the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Pro. 18: 19

A brother offended is harder to win over than a fortified city, and contentions [separating families] are like the bars of a castle.

Which is easier, to keep a clay pot whole or to shatter it and then try to put it back together again?  So it is with your most precious relationships.  You get really close to someone, you share your lives and your secrets, and you trust each other with your very hearts.  All is going well until one of you betrays the relationship.  Now comes the time of testing.  Can you get back to where you once were?

This verse does not tell us anything necessarily new.  You know that it can be very difficult to rebuild a close relationship once it has broken down.  The difficulty of the work may be one reason why so many people don’t even bother, especially the ones on the receiving end of the betrayal.  The point of this scripture is not to instruct us on how to ease the rebuilding process but how to avoid it altogether.

Understanding how hard it is to be restored into another’s confidence should prompt us to deliberately consider our words and actions so as not to cause offense or breed contention in the first place.  Recognizing the value of the relationships we could lose should motivate us to handle them with such care.  Father God, teach us to realize the priceless treasures that you have gifted to us through our relationships, and make us master curators of the hearts entrusted to us.