How Can We Love Our Enemies?
Jesus says we’re to love our enemies. It can be hard enough to love people who bug us, who do or say things we dislike, whose politics or lifestyle offends us. Loving true enemies seems, well, impossible. Yet Jesus calls us to this kind of impossibility. Lord, help me to do the impossible, by your grace and strength.
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A Shocking Command
Jesus said many unsettling things, but one of them was downright shocking. “Love your enemies,” he said. He didn’t mean “feel warm fuzzies for your enemies.” Rather, he meant “Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” This command of Jesus to love our enemies couldn’t be more challenging . . . or more needed in our world today.
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Miriam and Moses
Every superhero and super-shero has an origin story. An origin story often includes a flashback that tells us how that person acquired his or her powers as well as purpose in fighting crime. When I think of Moses I have visions of that old Charlton Heston movie “The Ten Commandments” where Moses faces the burning bush or is standing before the parting of the Red Sea. However, I am captivated by his origin story and the critical role of his older sister Miriam. Miriam’s curiosity and creativity may have seemed small, but they were of biblical proportions.
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Midwifing the Kingdom
Our work is a witness not so much in what we do, but in how we go about doing it. The midwives are exemplars of agents of life that God sets into motion to usher the life of the Kingdom. Work is the womb where that life is nourished and birthed. They knew the policies that affected people rested in their hands. They did the next right thing. The next right thing is usually the hard thing.
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Prayers for Workers: You Are My Hiding Place
God is your hiding place, a place of safety and security. God will be there for you when your work is more than you can handle, when the people you work with are at their crankiest. Jesus invites you to come to him, to find rest for your soul with him.
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Are You Willing to Listen to Jesus?
You can read the gospels. You can study the biblical text. You can hear what Jesus said. But are you willing to listen to Jesus, to pay close attention, to open your heart and your life to his word? Jesus wants to speak to your deepest needs. He wants to guide your life. Are you ready to listen?
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Avoiding the Approval Trap
Sometimes we yearn so much for human approval that we are not faithful to God and God’s truth. We say what people want to hear because we want them to like us. We can grow in truthfulness if we acknowledge the reality of God’s truth and seek it faithfully. We can find the strength to say even what is unpopular when we seek most of all to honor and glorify God.
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Wealth, Pleasure, Happiness, and Fame
Jesus invites us to examine ourselves honestly, to explore our true desires. What do you seek most of all? Wealth? Pleasure? Happiness? Fame? Though God made the goodness of this world to be enjoyed, we find ultimate meaning and delight when we seek first God and God’s kingdom.
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What Do You Really Want in Life?
What do you want in life? Honestly, what do you really want in life? You may know the “right answers” to this question, but as you take an honest look at how you’re living, what is actually true for you? Jesus challenges us to be honest about our deepest desires, so that our hearts might be transformed to be more like the heart of God.
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We Are the Lord’s
No matter what happens, you belong to Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ is not just any old powerless idol. He is the God who suffered for us.
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The Lord Will Fight for You
We have to reckon with the destruction caused by the complex interplay of divine intention and the desires of humans in the Exodus story. And we also have to reckon with something else: Jesus ultimately entered this story. He ultimately answered the violence of the way things happen in this world by submitting to it.
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Prayers for Workers: Your Times are in God’s Hand
There are times when the troubles and discouragements of work seem to go on and on. You wonder why God isn’t being more helpful, either making things better at work or leading you to another job. You can feel desperate, as if you’re wasting your life in a dead end job. But, the truth is that your times are in God’s hand. God is holding your life even as he is holding you. In God’s care you can be confident, even as you cry out for God to deliver you.
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