Prayer for Tomorrow's World
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43
Love your Enemy
This is the commandment of Jesus which christians generally find difficult and non-christians find incomprehensible. Thus it gets pushed under the carpet. Jesus included in those to be loved persecutors and people who set themselves against one or what one stands for. Hostility may arise as they see that christians have the peace of God and they do not.
Certainly we want to remove all enmity from our lives and from the world. The most satisfactory way of dealing with an enemy is to convert them into a person of God.
To love is not to like, or to approve or to accept. Love wants the best for the person and helps them to get it. Jesus’ answer to people who do not fit into God’s world is to love them and point them to God’s way.
But what I tell you is this: Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors; only so can you be children of your Heavenly Father, who causes the sun to rise on good and bad alike, and sends the rain on the innocent and the wicked.
(Matthew 5:44–45)
These people are God’s children, gone wrong. God’s love to them gives them sun and rain, that is, food and water—until such time as they come to a vision of what could be for them.
Jesus answered them: ‘It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick; I have not come to call the virtuous but sinners to repentance.’
(Luke 5:31–32)
To think through and pray about
What does that person see in me that threatens them?
Those who feel downtrodden, who want and do not know how to get, who are inwardly disturbed, feel at odds with the world; they cannot escape without help.
The world has made progress in replacing bloody battles with talking.
We can safely leave retribution to God.
And now I am sending an angel before you to guard you on your way and to bring you to the place I have prepared... If you will only listen to his voice and do all I tell you, then I shall be an enemy to your enemies, and I shall harass those who harass you.
(Exodus 23:20–22)
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About the Book
Today’s world has brought awareness of where we are going and with it anxiety. Thinking people advocate looking for a new direction to take. Ordinary people feel that their lives could be much better.
We see need and inequality on our doorstep and everywhere. Public conscience is pricked, but people feel unable to do anything. Politicians struggle to balance conflicting demands and policies. Quality of living has gone out of our lives.
People ask, where is God? A better question is, where are we, in relation to God? Prayer for tomorrow’s world brings out fundamental things to rethink and put right. It looks at what the Bible has to say. The book stimulates our thoughts, as we seek God’s way into a future that he can bless.
About the Author
Jim has travelled extensively, coming into contact with modern and indigenous cultures and seeing how people live in widely differing circumstances. Born in a village in the heart of England, three things shaped his life: he became a christian, he went to Tanganyika as an Education Officer, there he and his wife found each other.
Jim’s professional life has been divided between developing countries and England. He graduated in mathematics and physics, then turned to education. Jim and his wife got into helping young africans improve their skills. Later they helped church social projects in Nepal and visited churches in South America. They also spent time in Australia and New Zealand and Israel. They saw how sophisticated and village people lived, under a variety of conditions.
Wherever they went Jim and his wife worked with local churches. They lead Bible study and house groups. They retired to Spain, where Jim lives now, alone, in a village, well supported by the foreword-looking spanish system.