Prayer for July 28, 2021

Prayer for July 28, 2021: Please pray with me. God of all creation, you are Lord of all. We love to claim you as our own. But we seem to conveniently forget that our enemies also claim you. Oh, how we love to be the good guys who you align with. But what if we aren’t? What if it’s not about who you align with, as if you are waiting to see who is right and who is wrong. What if instead it’s about us aligning with you? That gets dangerous. That means we don’t have the answers. That means we’ll need to change and be transformed. That means we’ll need to do self-examination. That means we’ll need forgiveness. That means we’ll have to make amends for those we have hurt. We are called to love our enemies, because more often than not, we are your enemies, even though we think we aren’t. Yet, you love us anyway. That’s why we can in turn love our enemies. They show us who we are. Amen.

Call to action: Love our enemies is difficult – very difficult. We don’t like it and will make every excuse we can to not do it. We’ll spin logic around so that we don’t have to. For today, stop all that. Name your enemy and do something different – be vulnerable. Offer to help them. But only if you are willing to have the relationship be open to change. If you aren’t, then ask yourself this – why? How am I comforted by having an enemy I can hate? Why would I rather hold onto hate, rather than be changed and be embraced by love.