(following the Lenten ideas found here)
Well crud! I can see it is going to be a long
Lent. Why couldn’t we start out
with something nice and easy, like ‘give $20 to a non-profit of your choosing’
(the idea for Saturday); you know, something like that? But, pray for my enemies? That is a million times harder for me, and
maybe not for the reasons you might think.
See, I find it fairly easy to pray for national
enemies, those whose hatred of me is relatively distant and generic. I don’t know why those are easy, perhaps
because I have long practiced that, or maybe because they are distant and generic,
or even still because those prayers don’t ever really have to cause me to act
differently. The odds of my meeting that enemy on the street are pretty slim as
are the odds that I will go to a place where I will meet a terrorist or
national of a country with whom we are at war any time soon.
What makes praying for my enemies difficult is that
to do so I have to acknowledge that I have enemies. I have to confess that I
have people who desire my harm. And
worse yet, I have to admit that there may be those that I desire their harm.
This is not a concept with which I am particularly comfortable, as I think I’m
a pretty nice guy. Or at least I try to
be.
But if I think about it in terms of those I might
have to change my behavior toward, to seek their good rather than being
indifferent to them or even being passive-aggressive toward them, well, a list
begins to form, and I begin to have people for whom I need to pray.
Dear God, first help me to acknowledge the darkness
that rests within me. Then, help me to
see your face in the face of my enemy and help me make my enemy my friend.
Shalom y'all,
Owen
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