But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you
When I read Matthew 5:44, I struggled with this.
The idea of loving your enemies, I find extremely challenging because of my own past. With years of being bullied, as well as by members of my own family, but also other school kids when I was in school & high school, nuns who were meant to teach, but chose to exclude me instead due to my disability, in later years, other bullies included: bosses, neighbours, animal rescue workers & Govt workers, even so called friends on social media.
Before writing this reflection, I prayed for guidance. It’s not that I’m filled with hatred, because I’m not and I’m not filled with anger either. It’s more like I’ve switched off my emotions so that I feel nothing for these people. So when Matthew 5:44 says to love your enemies, I honestly don’t know how. How do I see these people beyond the negative experiences that they forced onto me. How do I see them in a different light so as to love them.
That’s what I prayed about.
I asked God for understanding and clarification. I needed to know how to write about something that I struggle personally with.
I had been bullied so much in the past that I actually switched off my emotions completely. I had built a wall around myself and didn’t let anyone in; not family or friends. I distanced myself from everyone.
The only one I remained close to was God.
During those very dark periods of my life, God was there with me. I might not have always sensed his presence as I was too busy being angry at the world plotting the demise of all. But God was always there with me, making sure I didn’t do anything stupid.
Through my late teens & entire twenties, I kept myself cut off from the world.
During that time, I reflected on my own life and God’s part in it and I bonded with God more, building up my relationship with Him even though I physically didn’t want to be here.
By my thirties, I’d forgotten how to love and had I read Matthew 5:44 at that time, I would have found it beyond my comprehension.
It wasn’t until I adopted, from a rescue named Companions4Life, a little terrier x shih tzu named Cleo, in my late thirties, that my heart started to not only fill with love but overflow.
Cleo showed me how to love and how to be loved. I believe that God sent her to me knowing full well I needed someone to love and I always saw her as my little angel as well as my soulmate.
Cleo has long since passed and took a very big part of me with her, but what she did leave with me was her legacy of how to love. But I still found the concept of ‘loving your enemies’ challenging. How do you love someone who has caused nothing but grief?!
So, I prayed.
God let me sleep on it, but by the next morning, which was a Sunday, God started answering in parts.
The first part came as I was driving to church.
I was listening to my Christian playlist on Spotify and the song that came on was Wynonna Judd’s “Testify to Love”. Now, yes, this song IS on my playlist, but so are roughly 200 other Christian related songs, so the fact that the one song that could answer this particular prayer should happen to be randomly playing on Spotify at that very moment is, in itself, a miracle.
This part of the answer tells me that I don’t have to focus specifically on my enemies, but as long as I am a testament to love in all that I do, then that alone should be an example to those that have caused me grief in the past. If they’re long gone, it doesn’t matter, they’re out of my life permanently, and if they’ve found a way to stalk me (as some have done), then my own behaviour, with luck, should cause them to think twice about how they treat me and THAT is how one testifies to love.
The 2nd part came in the sermon on Sunday which focused on two verses.
One was Philippians 3:12-15, the other, and this one stood out to me more as I felt it was part of God’s answer to me was Isaiah 43: 18-19, the lines especially: Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. Later on, Malcolm, who led the Sunday service, mentions, “Live each day like it’s the first day of the rest of your life.”
When he said this, this triggered a memory in me. When Cleo, who I mentioned above, first came to me, I didn’t know her age, but I said to her: “Happy Birthday Cleo, I don’t know what happened to you before now, but today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
And that was the 2nd part of God’s answer to me. Let the past go, what’s happened in the past, stays in the past, I don’t need to worry about that anymore.
The final part of God’s answer came to me when I spoke with Malcolm after the service. I mentioned to him that I struggle to “love my enemies” and I have a fair few current ones. And Malcolm said to me: As long as you have forgiven them and let go of the grief they’ve caused me no matter how recent, it doesn’t matter that I don’t “love” them. If you’ve forgiven them, that’s all that matters.
So now I’m able to share with you.
Don’t be angry with your enemies, let it go. Forgive those that have caused you grief in the past, forgive those that are causing you grief in the present, you don’t have to actually love them, it doesn’t matter if you’ve switched off your emotions toward them, so that you’re numb inside when it concerns them, just as long as you forgive them, and pray for them, and THAT is the best way you can love your enemies.
TigerSpirit's Corner 