Evening Prayer: Enemy Love

Dear God of relentless, boundary-crossing Love,

Tonight I bring before You the face I would rather forget — the colleague who undermined me in that meeting, the family member whose words still sting weeks later, the neighbor whose yard sign makes my blood pressure rise. You know their names even better than I do, because You love them with the same fierce tenderness You pour out on me.

1 John 4:19 tells us, "We love because He first loved us." Not we love the lovable — just, we love. Period. The early Anabaptists understood this with a clarity that cost them everything. Dirk Willems was fleeing for his life across a frozen pond in 1569 when his pursuer broke through the ice. Willems turned back. He reached down and pulled the man who wanted him dead out of the frigid water. It cost him his freedom and ultimately his life. He loved because he had first been loved.

I am not running across any frozen ponds tonight, Lord. But there is a text I could send, a grudge I could release, a prayer I could whisper for someone who does not wish me well. Soften the calloused places in my heart where I have decided certain people are beyond the reach of Your hesed — Your stubborn, covenantal kindness.