Daily DevotionalCultivate different facets of love each day this month.
February 15: Loving Your Enemies
- Scripture: Matthew 5:44 – But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
- Reflection: Contemplate the challenge of loving those who oppose us. In our divided society, it’s not difficult to come up with people that seem to be our enemies. Alarmingly, it often feels as if they’re our acquaintances in town. Or even people we once called friends, but now vehemently disagree with about world views.
So how do we attempt this form of love? Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber says,“Jesus tells you to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, not so that you can be good, but so you can be free! This is freedom from the corrosive distortions of hatred, freedom from having to protect yourself, prove yourself and preserve your rightness. This is the freedom of the gospel, the freedom of God who loved God’s own enemies enough to die for them.”
Try this. About your enemy, be curious. Wonder why?
This instruction by Jesus doesn’t intend for you to stay in dangerous, life-threatening relationships or situations. Of course, some of us have vocations that place us in such positions, and if so, we need this guidance even more. From a place of wellbeing, and safety, reframe your connection to an enemy by praying for them. Remember their humanity. You can continue to disagree. Simply recall that your opponents, your enemies, your adversaries, are also human. That perspective often helps to change the way we feel about people, and choose to engage or relate to them. - Spiritual Practice Prompt: Pray for an adversary. If possible, look for a way to demonstrate kindness toward them.
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- One More Night by Maroon 5: https://youtu.be/fwK7ggA3-bU?si=V27BIMS56OZ4zS0A
When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. . . .
Probably no admonition of Jesus has been more difficult to follow than the command to “love your enemies.” Some people have sincerely felt that its actual practice is not possible. It is easy, they say, to love those who love you, but how can one love those who openly and insidiously seek to defeat you? . . .
This command of Jesus challenges us with new urgency. Upheaval after upheaval has reminded us that modern humanity is traveling along a road called hate, in a journey that will bring us to destruction. . . . Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to love one’s enemy is an absolute necessity for our survival. Love even for enemies is the key to the solution of the problems of our world. Jesus is not an impractical idealist: he is the practical realist.
I am certain that Jesus understood the difficulty inherent in the act of loving one’s enemy. He never joined the ranks of those who talk glibly about the easiness of the moral life. He realized that every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God. So when Jesus said “Love your enemy,” he was not unmindful of its stringent qualities. Yet he meant every word of it. Our responsibility as Christians is to discover the meaning of this command and seek passionately to live it out in our daily lives. . . .
When Jesus bids us to love our enemies, he is speaking of neither eros [romantic love] nor philia [reciprocal love of friends]; he is speaking of agape, understanding and creative, redemptive goodwill for all people. Only by following this way and responding with this type of love are we able to be children of our Father who is in Heaven.
— Rev Dr. Martin Luther King