You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.
The kingdom of heaven is life lived upside down from our day to day expectations. We have no trouble loving those we love and despising those we hate but the Radical Jesus says His disciples will do differently. As Glen Stassen states it well,
“Loving only those who love you is the in-group selfishness of cliquishness, cronyism, nepotism, racism, and nationalism. We recognize it immediately because we see it so often. If we love only those who love us, we see only an in-group perspective, and become closed-minded to how other see things. As a result, we cannot understand our enemies’ perspectives enough to deal with them effectively.”
The followers of Jesus consider things differently. His command of our hearts shapes them to see our enemies in the same way that God sees us. We are compassionate and loving when our human reaction is to lash out and segregate from those who do us wrong.
Lent can be about much more than quiet meditation on that item which we have given up for the period. Ask yourself though, are you any closer to Jesus than you were four weeks ago? Take an additional step and integrate an act of love into your lent observance. Call someone from whom you are estranged. Restrain your frustration with another. Develop a new relationship with someone outside of your circle of friends. The list is endless and the effects profound.
LOVE | ACCEPT | FORGIVE 