If your enemy is hungry, feed them – part two.

a verse or two

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” John 10:11

Spiritual Walk and Musings: If your enemy is hungry, feed them – part two.

Following on from last week musings on the killing of Osama bin Laden. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to know repaying evil for evil does not work – but let’s face it, it comes so naturally – we all want to get even, have the last word, to win the argument.

In 1992 Vivienne and I were helping the Kurdish people after the first gulf war on a project to help provide clean water to some villages in the mountains of North Iraq. I remember our translator telling us “there was a person killed in that village today…someone from another village shot him”. He explained that meant in a week or two the brother or relative of the dead man will kill the person who shot the dead man. And it just goes on and on and the cycle is never broken.

And so I am musing, that perhaps the only way to break the cycle of evil is to not retaliate, perhaps even back down, to lose. Perhaps the only way to break the cycle of evil is to die on a bloodied cross – hands spread wide saying “I will not retaliate to your bullying”. Saying words like “honey – let’s not argue, let’s talk instead”.

Perhaps a way to break the cycle of evil is to use the words I am sorry.

Something to do: Feeding the enemy in Richmond if they are hungry.

What does feeding one’s enemy in Richmond look like?

Maybe feeding the enemy is deciding to follow Jesus’ weird example of being friends with losers. And so our attitude towards that person, that farmer, that worker, that neighbour, that employee – that person who is considered a weirdo, our attitude is to decide to be their friend and no longer think of them as weird.

Maybe feeding the hungry enemy is taking the weird person to a café which means being seen in town with a drop out (shock horror – the respectful elder is sitting with a hooker). And while seen in public, feeding the hungry enemy means transferring some of the dropout’s low respect onto oneself and publicly transferring some of one’s own healthy respect onto the dropout – lifting them higher in the eye of all.

Maybe feeding the enemy is befriending that person who is always rude, looking past their rudeness realising that maybe they are lonely and have lost the art of mixing socially. And so what they need is a friend who looks past their mannerisms and instead calls them by their name, has them around for a meal, invites them to church so they can learn God loves them heaps—because look at the other strange people in church and ‘if God loves them, surely He can love me’.

Maybe feeding the enemy means really listening to the other side of the story – not just pretending to hear. Maybe it means to not win the argument; instead realising that winning is not that important because often wining at all cost is not about truth, but about the pride and arrogance of the winner.

May we learn to feed our enemy if they are hungry.

God Bless
Jon

To Ponder and Pray: To love the unlovable.

Lord – it is in you and in you alone that I have status or worth.
Help me not cling to status if it means I hold back from loving someone of nil status.
Let me be interested in those thought to be uninteresting.
And may I love the unlovable.
Amen