Wednesday, June 25, 2025
This morning’s devotional from Seedbed.com (posted above) hit a tender place for me.
I have been confronted with the instruction to love my enemies several times by God.
Six years ago a ministry leader I trust and respect wrote about the 23rd Psalm and observed in writing about a verse in Psalm 23 the imagery of “a feast prepared for us in the presence of our enemies with them FORCED TO WATCH.” My sense of that writer’s description was that we’d be feasting with our enemies forced to stand around the walls watching us and longing to eat. That perspective on the Psalm 23 verse seemed to be a protective and comforting view and it was easy to accept. I just hadn’t seen that in that verse before, however. The whole context for tables and enemies had gone in an entirely different direction for me. I think that is due to my having realized that Christ himself remained “at the table”, eating with at least one person who could rightfully be called his “enemy” (Judas) and still, Jesus was not tempted to partake of the “dainty” that had been being put before him again and again by satan since Jesus was first tempted in the wilderness 3 years earlier – (the lure to deny, dodge, or yield to others’ agendas and attempts to thwart the purpose for which Jesus had been sent by the Father.) “Staying at the table” has come to mean for me steadfast faithfulness to God in the midst of circumstances that are more than a little uncomfortable, testing, unjust, or even downright appealing. In doing so, one may be even more greatly blessed and avoid the tempting risk of gloating triumphantly before one’s enemies. If we are to love our enemies, there must be a way found to make peace with them or at least to be secure in trusting our peace and protection as children of God in their presence, being at peace with God and in our own identity in Christ, while at the table with them. Christ’s patience with and hospitality to the enemies at the table is a difficult example to follow. Earlier in my life I had found it easier to deny, dismiss, demean, and make my enemies irrelevant to my life. God chastened me at one point, saying, “I called you to love your enemies, not to dismiss them as irrelevant.” With one person who certainly positioned me as her enemy in a work environment in the early 2000’’s, when I prayed asking God how to respond to her, his explicit and only instruction was, “Sacrifice” which clearly indicated to me action for her good. And while I struggled to find the proper way to sacrifice on her behalf, it did seem to bless her and even worked for my good, as well, in the end. In another situation more recently, someone I had come to see as an enemy decades ago, whom I believed I had forgiven, died. When I heard the news, I felt nothing, I did nothing. That total lack of compassion for the person or the family surprised and disturbed me. In prayer I heard the Lord say, “Schaedenfreud.” (Though in reflection it seemed more like a question to me than a statement.). Had I really only suppressed my hurt and called it forgiveness while actually harboring relief and a sense of having seen justice done by an enemies’ death? God took it a step further when he asked, “How will you feel when you see that person in heaven?” Honestly, it had never occurred to me that the person would BE in heaven. Clearly, I had believed a lie about having done the true work of forgiveness, and certainly had failed to love with the love of the Lord. I have learned that Christ calls me to love with the selfless love of the Father, desiring God’s best for others, even those deemed “enemies”, even when my own affection for another and prayers for their well being are hard and reconciliation, at least in this life, seems impossible. It doesn’t end here. Jesus knew that on the cross and with his dying breath He sought the Father’s best for his enemies.
As early as the Wake Up Call devotional hits my box, I often listen to it the first time while still lying in bed. This morning, after listening and commenting in the FB group ( which took a while!), I rolled over, pulled the cover up tight around my neck and set out to go back to sleep. As I did so, the Lord interjected one of those brief “frame” dreams, silent but potent, that He often uses to reinforce a point or to introduce me to His perspective or purpose. The scene was this:
I was in a hospital room standing on the far side, away from the door on the other side of a hospital bed where a patient was lying quietly. It seemed I had been sitting in a small straight back chair against the wall. A care provider, a doctor or physician’s assistant it seemed, had entered the room and I was moving to get myself and the chair out of the way and out of the room to give them privacy. But there was not just one chair hemming me in, but 3 chairs. The first was one at the foot of bed on the side where I’d been sitting. It was a 1950’d-ish Danish-modern looking desk chair on wheels upholstered in a dark fabric and it had an elongated polished wood triangle positioned at the top of the back, sort of like where a headrest would be. I thought it was attractive but the polished wood triangular headrest looked uncomfortable. The next chair was an imposing looking old fashioned oak chair with thick slats curved around the back and arms that gave it a sturdy look. It, too, was on wheels. It looked like something one might see paired with a large old oak roll top executive desk. Then there was the smaller metal straight back chair with green plastic upholstery like one might see in a hospital cafeteria or lab waiting room, in which I appeared to have been sitting. It was not on wheels like the other two. I moved to begin pushing the other two chairs back out of the way so I could move the straight chair and myself out of the narrow space against the wall, as the healthcare provider watched and waited. I seemed to be both the visitor struggling with the chairs and the patient in the bed. LOL!
It seems like an incongruent dream, but the Lord knows me well and it makes (mostly) good sense to me as I smile thinking about it. I’ll just say the chairs represent a type of “throne” upon which either one’s self in the dominating “flesh” of the world sits or the throne which one’s “self” surrenders to Christ’s Presence. Clearly one can get caught up in simply changing chairs and get hemmed in by them instead of yielding them to Christ.
All of this brings to mind Luke 18:1-8
The Parable of the Persistent Widow
18 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”
6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
I have often felt like the persistent widow, and for years felt that God was not hearing my pleas for justice, especially when it came to what I perceived as injustice to me. But I have seen Him work in ways I could never have imagined. His justice has rarely been what I expected and sometimes it was meted out to unexpected parties. There were times I had even given up praying for justice and simply removed myself from an advocacy role, sometimes for myself, sometimes on behalf of others. Sometimes I just have to get out of my own way for Christ to do the healing work according to His will.
Cathy Byrd
Titus 2 Partnership, Inc.
850-832-4052