At our recent Ad Council meeting I offered a devotion from theologian Frederick Buechner, entitled “Look At Your Enemies to Love Them” in the book Faith That Matters. Our culture loves to tell us who our enemies are. The news media and social media thrive on pitting us against each other. However, Jesus tells us to love and pray for our enemies in Matthew 5:44. Buechner admits that this is very difficult for us to do, so one way to start is to look at our enemies. “You see the lines in their faces and the way they walk when they’re tired.” This is one step we can take toward love, which needn’t mean that we become emotionally attached to our enemies. Jesus calls us to see both the humanity in others and the imago dei, the image of God. But in order to see, we need to look. Buechner wrote this devotion in 1988, long before the advent of social media, which has given us the ability to express our anger and hatred while hiding behind a screen. As Christians, we are called to live and love in ways that reflect Jesus, not this world. The next time we see an enemy pictured on tv or online, let’s take a moment to really look and discover their humanity, the imago dei. Then we can offer up a prayer for that person and ask the Holy Spirit to inspire us to love better.
-Pastor Kate
