Love. A word so small and yet so vast. The last weeks I feel as if I have been in school. The school of learning to love. I don’t mean the kind of fuzzy love that you get when you have a crush on someone, or the love that you feel for your dog or cat. I mean the nitty gritty love that loves its enemy when you have been hurt by them already. The love that never fails. The love that Christ loved us with so much so, that He would die for us, even though we were still sinners, and had not yet come to love Him.
I’m sure many of you know how to love with this love already, and this concept I am just now learning, is something that you practice daily. But in my life, I haven’t had too many people be unloving to me, that I am still daily in contact with and trying to love as Jesus would love them.
Luke 6:27-36 speaks of loving your enemy. The one who hates you, the one who curses you and mistreats you. He tells us to love the person who slaps us across the face and steals our coat off of our back. He tells us to treat them exactly how we hope they would treat us.
Then in verses 37-42 He goes into the all infamous passage about taking the log out of your own eye, not judging and forgiving.
In our bibles there are different headings separating the two sections of scripture, yet when Jesus spoke these words, I don’t think He meant them to be separate thoughts. I think when we think about loving our enemy, we do need to examine ourselves to see if we are doing any of the same things to them and “forgive them, for they know not what they do”.
En*e*my. noun. A person who is actively opposed or hostile to someone or something. One who acts in a way contrary to another’s best interests.
Who is our enemy? Satan. Yes. Ursula from the Little Mermaid? Duh! These are very obvious enemies. But what about our husbands when they don’t say nice words to us? Our mother in-laws when they degrade our wife-abilities, our brother when he doesn’t share. I was just reading in CS Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters about how Uncle Wormwood writes to his Devil of a nephew Screwtape to build up in his subject’s mind, the idea of loving his enemy in the midst of world war II by foolish ideals such as taking the German pilot who fell out of the sky into his home and nurse him back to health, all the while, encouraging him to neglect his mother who is getting on his nerves and snap at her at any chance he gets.
I in the same way, don’t ususally think of the people closest to me, as the ones that I need to love as I love my enemy, instead I try and “help them learn how to best please me” or manipulate situations into getting my way or justify my unloving actions because they did so first. But that’s not what Jesus teaches us. And then, always, 1 Corinthians 13 that tells us exactly how we should act. We must be patient, kind, not envying or boasting. Not being proud selfish or rude we must not keep track of all the times someone does something mean. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always trusts, always hopes and always preservers. I wish I was truly like this all the time! can you imagine how changed our world would be, if all those who are filled with the Spirit actually listened to Him and acted this way??!!
A couple of days ago I walked through town to the beach a mile or so away from my hotel by myself. I was in a decent mood, and trotted down to the sea shore. Have you ever noticed that the Ocean is like a magnifying glass for emotion? If you are happily romping with your friends, the waves seem to play along happily dancing and crashing with you. Yet, if you are by yourself, even if you do not feel lonesome, the waves scream at you of your state of aloneness and drown out all voices of reason. I went to the beach Naomi (Pleasant) and left Mara (Bitter). And as I walked home in silence, feeling bitterly alone, a group of guys started calling out at me. Now, this is a daily occurrence, and most of the time I ignore it, or sometimes joke good naturedly with them that I am not a dog, even though they are calling me like one. Not so on this day. One of the guys used all the English he had, trying to grab my attention, even though I was now a block away and he called “hey sister! Look at me!” I was SO annoyed. So tried of being called at by Haitian males as a piece of meat, and so I snapped back in perfect creole “I don’t want to look at you.” and coldly continued to walk away, leaving the group of guys silenced. I know it doesn’t seem that big of a deal, but where was my heart? Was it for loving my enemy? Was it for caring for the least of these as if he were our Lord? Unfortunately no. the Lord gently rebuked me in that moment, and I knew I was not being loving.
I’ve been practicing now. It does seem to get easier to love, even if that love is unreciprocated. And especially when I am going to our wonderful Heavenly Father to be filled with His love every day. He is so good. And SO patient with a silly girl like me.
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