Rev. Dr. Julie Higgs
My husband and I pray before supper, starting with my childhood table grace. We thank God for the day—and then the list starts. People we’re carrying in our hearts. Sometimes the list is long.
But it’s rare for us to pray for our enemies. I’d like to say that’s because we’re too busy trying to love them—but that’s not true.
I think we don’t pray for them because we have a pattern for our prayers. It’s a good prayer. Jesus, when teaching the Lord’s Prayer, didn’t tell us specifically to pray for our enemies.
But I think we don’t want God to provide good things to our enemies. We want them to be trounced, to lose their positions of power, to suffer. Perhaps we’re too narrow in our faith and our imaginations to even hope that God will transform them, let alone trust that God will. Perhaps we don’t want God to transform them because we’re afraid God might transform us.
O God, we know your power to love and heal is beyond our imagining. Sometimes we forget about your power to transform. Help trust in your power to transform those for whom we believe it’s impossible. Or at least help us to dare to ask for you to transform them—and us. We pray these things through the one who transformed death into new life, your son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
