A Blessing in Chains
Loving those who hate you
Welcome back, Salt and Light readers, to our final week. We have released the final page of our mini-comic, “Believing in Babylon.” We appreciate you walking with us on our journey. We pray that you are encouraged and challenged by the graphic retelling of Daniel.
We, like Daniel and the exiles, are commanded to be a blessing wherever we are. We are to shine in the darkness so that others may see. We are to do good so that others would experience the greatest Good. We are called to love because God first loved us not because others love us.
True love is loving as God loves. We have a problem with the love of God. We have a real big wall to climb over to live out His love. He loves His enemies. He loves those who hate Him. He loves those who murdered His one and only Son. How can we love like God?
Daniel and his fellow exiles excelled and blessed those who had cursed them. The conquering nation humiliated and destroyed the place where God dwelt with them, the Temple. What a horrendous evil to destroy such a place of worship and love. And that is what an enemy does.
An enemy does not care about you. An enemy does not care about your family. An enemy does not care about the God you worship. Sometimes your enemy will destroy what you love. The worst enemy is the one who you love and then turns on you. You cared for them. Their life is better because you loved them. Yet they do not love you in return. They instead seek to hurt you. They may even think they are helping you as they harm you. How could God tell you to love people like this?
Daniel lived out what we feel and think is impossible. He rose up and blessed a people who destroyed his people. He excelled and grew to be a leader of a people who contrived to kill his friends in a furnace. He did not only bless the nation in general, he blessed the very leader who ordered the destruction of the temple, the exile of his people, and the person who sent him to his death by lions.
In an upside down, inside out nation, what member of which political party are you called to love? What group who has wronged you have you been called to bless? What person have you loved who has in turn hurt you, are you called to still love? Is this even possible?
Daniel has shown us the way. Jesus showed us the way. The Spirit of God can empower you and lead you to the way to love even your enemy. It will not be easy or simple.
For we were once enemies of God, each and every one of us, but God loved us anyway. He loved us to His death. Love still comes with a price. How will you pay it? How much will it cost? We can’t tell you. But the history of the people of God is filled with both love and pain.
Peter knew the love of God. Peter knew the cost of love. He wrote, as we respond to those who hurt us, that we should
“not return evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing.” (1 Peter 3:9)
The apostle Paul was so identified with the cost of love and blessing that he told the churches to “remember my chains.” (Col 4:18). We are to remember that when we follow God in loving our enemies and our neighbors it will come at a cost. It always has and it always will.
May God fill you with His Spirit that you may be able to love those who hate you. May you bless those who curse you. May you shine in the darkness that they would know the One who first loved you.
Nace Lanier