"But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you." Matthew 5:44 NKJV.
It is easy, they say, to love those who love you, but how can one love those who openly and insidiously seek to defeat you...?
Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to love one's enemy is an absolute necessity for our survival.
Love even for our enemies is the key to the solution of the problems of our world. Jesus is not an impractical idealist; he is the practical realist...
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction...
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity.
By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
The burdens they carried were, at least initially, the result of other people's prejudices and hatreds, not their own. In a sense, they had every right to feel the way they did.
Yet as soon as they were able to see themselves as fallible human beings, they were able to lay aside their self-justification.
And in making the conscious decision to break the cycle of hatred, they discovered their ability to forgive.
~ Johann Christoph Arnold
"It is also necessary to realise that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the person who has been wronged, the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of some tortuous injustice,
the absorber of some terrible act of oppression. The wrongdoer may request forgiveness. They may come to themselves, and like the prodigal son, move up some dusty road, their heart palpitating
with the desire for forgiveness. But only the injured neighbour, the loving father back home, can really pour out the warm waters of forgiveness.
Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship.
Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning...
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
What will we leave behind for our children? What kind of a life do we want to live with? Love? Hate? Hope? Fear? Goodness or evil?
Ain't easy, the journey never is. But the answer is crystal clear. Freedom is a choice away. Now, don't hang me just yet. I struggle as you do.
~ Sv ".+
2 comments:
Using the words of some who had the most to forgive is very effective in demonstating that not only is forgiveness required but is attainable. When agape love, a choice not tied to emotion, is applied to the 'offender', we then can move on to forgiveness that does not say what happened is OK, it says, "it's the past, can we build from here?" Thank you so much for using the gift God placed in you to make a differenc in this life.
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