Pure?

"She was in her mid-eighties and had lived a good life."

That was how my friend described the deceased woman whose funeral she attended that day. It was the type of description that we like to hear when someone in our life looses another someone in their life to the inevitable, death.

But the way that the deceased was honored by her grandson, a man in his early thirties, when he described his relationship with his grandmother, now THAT is the sentence that really has made an impact.

He said, "My relationship with my grandmother was the most pure relationship in my life."

Pure.

Wow!

The description of a pure relationship was so intriguing to me that I looked up the word "pure" in the dictionary. Some of my favorites out of Merriam-Webster are these:

1 a (1) : unmixed with any other matter
(2) : free from dust, dirt, or taint
(3) : spotless, stainless: free from harshness or roughness and being in tune

2 a (1) : free from what vitiates, weakens, or pollutes
(2) : containing nothing that does not properly belong
a : free from moral fault or guilt
b : marked by chastity

A pure relationship; how beautiful.

What a challenge - to strive to make all my relationships pure. Relationships that are free from all moral fault or guilt. Free from taint. Relationships that do not include anything that weakens or pollutes.

This includes not only my relationship with my heavenly Father, but my earthly relationships as well. And pure relationships should not only include those that I love and who love me, but my enemies too. Are all my relationships free of things that do not properly belong? Envy, hatred?
How about resentment, or even avoidance? These things do not belong in the life of a believer, no matter what. No matter what.

Pure has taken on a whole new meaning.