Love is hard especially when the command is to love your enemy. Love your neighbor can be done. We know our neighbors. We know their good intentions however misguided we think they are. But with our enemies, we know they mean to do us harm. Their intentions are clear, the destruction of all we have created in this world.
So how do we do it – love our enemies? We must choose every day, sometimes every hour, to love our enemy. It is first a rational problem, a choice, an agreement. Sometimes this is as far as we can get. Feeling love for our enemies is just too much to ask. Or is it?
It is to the feeling of love that we must open ourselves up. Love can’t be manufactured. Our feelings of Need and Want often are manipulated through marketing. But love is an empathetic response to another being that is based in mutual respect and value. It is the God part of us manifesting in the midst of this chaotic world we live in because God is love. By denying love to our enemies, we deny ourselves an opportunity to partake in God’s love.
Can we open ourselves up to God in order to love our enemy?
Thankfully this is another choice we must make and follow through on. One in which God will fill us as needed with God’s Holy Spirit and love as long as we choose to be open to them. It is God’s Holy Spirit at work in us that allows us to love our enemy and show us how we are to love one another without condition, just as our God loves us unconditionally.
We are not left alone in loving our enemies because God is with us.
from the UMCDevelopmentCenter.org
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