Love your enemies - really!

Its amazing the conversations that can start over a cup of coffee.  A few days ago the subject of loving our enemies came up.  What's up with that?  Who does that, anyway?

Well, Lidia Smith, for one.

I learned about her in an article by Hoag Levins.  She was a freed slave, a poor woman who had saved a little money by years of hard labor. After the battle, she drove to the field hospitals in a borrowed wagon and horse.  As she traveled through the farms she told of the thousands of suffering men. She accepted donations of food and clothing and, when the donations dried up, began spending her own money. Each day, with her wagon heaped high, she turned toward the hospitals; and when she reached them, weary from miles of travel, she began to distribute the articles she had brought. To Union soldiers only? No. Union and Confederate alike. In the latter, she was able to see past their role as warriors who were fighting to perpetuate slavery and view them only as wounded, suffering humans. She continued to provide the makeshift hospital populations around Gettysburg with food, clothing and delicacies until she had spent her entire life savings.

A soldier sharing his food and water with an enemy or giving him medical treatment or a freed slave spending her life savings to buy food for the wounded of Gettysburg, both Union and Confederate can only be explained by something much larger and infinitely more noble than instinct. There is no natural explanation for this kind of love, it is divine and must, therefore, have a divine origin.  God.

This  is love in the sense that Jesus used the word.  It is the willingness to serve others whether you are served or not.  It is the willingness to give your life for those who cannot, or even will not repay or thank you. 

Lydia Smith spending her life savings to bring food, clothing and water to a soldier who, if he had not been wounded would certainly have captured her and returned her to bondage in the South is an act of perfection.  It is expressing love as our Father in heaven would have it expressed.

Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.

                                                                                                               Ep 5:2 (The Message)

Love like that!