Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

In God’s Eyes

Is it easy? No. Is it right? Yes. One of the hardest gospel messages from Jesus is this one—love your enemies! Jesus says it twice! He acts on those words consistently and intentionally. As followers of Jesus, we can do no less.

 Even in the story of David and Saul, David has hunted Saul and found him. Saul had been horrible to David. When David has the chance to kill him, he doesn’t. The next line in this Scripture that doesn’t appear in this reading has David saying: “I regarded your life as precious today.” David sees through God’s eyes and values his life—regardless of what Saul did to him. He could not kill him because of that. He could not wish him harm.

Was it easy? I don’t think so! David struggled with his conscience, no doubt. It would be easy to justify, rationalize, or blame. But he doesn’t. He sees the preciousness of all life. Do we?

It is hard to see our enemies charitably. We can have every reason to say they deserve less of what life offers. It is easy to lessen the value of a human being. We can do that by calling them names or using code phrases to de-humanize. We use names we usually give to animals to describe human beings. We can say they are worthless or have no value to us. Think of the countless ways we de-humanize. And it’s even easier when we have hordes of people acting with us.

But in God’s eyes, all of life is precious. My challenge today is to visualize the person I find hardest to love and to hear myself say to them, “I regarded your life as precious today.” Is it easy? No. Is it right? Yes. So we pray to see all persons with God’s eyes, to change our hearts, and to help us start today to love our enemies.