The love for equals is a human thing – of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.
The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing – the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.
The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing –to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.
And then there is love for the enemy – love for the one who does not love you, but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.
- Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat, pg. 105
I loved this quote; but am barely learning to honor its implications with obedient response to Jesus and the Apostles teaching. The last line just leaves me wondering why it is we so often quote such things and so rarely take them to heart, why it is we so rarely put them into practice:
And then there is love for the enemy – love for the one who does not love you, but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.
As we love to say: Make Me More Like Jesus. But most of us really mean, but not yet, not now that I’ve got my security, property, and privilege to protect, not while I’m in military service serving my Mammon serving country, not while I’ve got another religion (Islam now) to defeat. When will we begin to believe that the Gospel pattern of life that Jesus lived is meant for us too?
For Him and you, Richard W. Wilson
Comment by Richard W. Wilson — August 31, 2008 @ 1:23 am
[...] HT: Kingdom People [...]
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