Devotional: Enemy Love

Dear God of radical, boundary-breaking Love,

The early believers in Jerusalem did something the Roman world had never seen. Acts 2:44-45 tells us they sold their possessions and shared with anyone who had need — not just the people they liked, not just their own families, but anyone. In a city seething with political tension, where Zealots sat next to tax collectors and former Pharisees broke bread with Gentile converts, they chose to open their hands instead of clenching their fists.

Lord, I confess that enemy love does not come naturally to me. When someone cuts me off in traffic, my first instinct is not generosity. When a coworker undermines me in a meeting, my impulse is to build walls, not bridges. Yet You ask me to do what those first believers did — to look at the person who makes my stomach tighten and see not an adversary, but someone bearing Your image.

Teach me the stubborn grace of the early church, where a man who once dragged believers to prison sat at the same table with the families he had terrorized, and they passed him the bread anyway. That is the kind of love that bewilders the world and opens a crack where Your kingdom light floods in.