While I wasn't eavesdropping on the barista with poor business practices, I opened my bible to Luke chapter 6 which covers everything from Jesus setting the Pharisees straight to choosing the 12 disciples to the Beatitudes. But one thing in particular stuck out to me that I have read before but write it off as a, "Duh, everyone knows that," passage. It comes in verses 35-36 where it says,
"But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful just as your Father is merciful."
When is the last time we were kind to people who were unkind to us?
I am a great driver, probably in the top 2% in all of North America. I do things right when I am behind the wheel but there is seldom a place where I am sitting that stirs aggression in my like my drivers seat does. As soon as I grab the steering wheel everyone else loses all ability to make wise decision and have some sort of common sense. It's like freshmen during there first day of high school, wandering aimlessly through the halls, slowing wen they shouldn't walking through the planters, turning in wrong directions, it's a disaster.
When I am behind the wheel I have zero sympathy for those inferior drivers around me. It says, "SLOWER traffic keep right," not, "If you want to go 55 in the fast lane go ahead, we aren't here to judge." But I have realized more and more as I get old and senile that I am a jerk and unloving to those cars around me. To the people who own those cars who don't turn when the light is red when clearly you can, or those who don't use their blinker and it wastes 10 seconds of my life, or those who get on the freeway going 45.
Those are the ungrateful and evil men in my life and I need to be kind, I need to be loving, I need to leanr to be merciful as my Father is merciful.
Who are the ungrateful and evil people in your life that you need to show mercy to?
1 comment:
Speaking to just the "ungrateful" people in my life I feel (if I am completely honest with my own self-centeredness) I can list every person in my life. I am sure every close person has been "ungrateful" and not recognizing how great I am and that makes me feel as though I don't want to be recognizing and grateful of who they, I mean why should I? What's in it for me?? ... But then God in his mercy pierces the ugly self-centeredness and reminds me I AM ungrateful, not that they are ungrateful (and I simply react to what they do) but that I AM ungrateful and evil in my life. And the only one who ever was perfectly grateful and perfectly good and deserved mercy was not shown it by God at the end of his life. And because this was so I, as an enemy to his plan of restoring complete shalom and love of man to the world, was shown mercy...
I feel I only have a chance to love my enemies today if I orient my self in the reality of this Gospel. I was first loved and shown mercy when I didn't deserve it. And because this is so (if I really believe and remember it) I won't be able to help but desire to show mercy to others, even when (and by God's grace especially when) they don't deserve it. Only by God's grace will community with our enemies be possible on this earth. Lord please come and let it be as it someday will be...
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