2025-01-14 A Meditation on Loving Our Enemies

“18 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, 19 and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. 20 So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, 21 because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. 22 What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? 23 For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.” (Ecc 2:18-23 ESV)

Starting to love those whom we contend with, this is a mystery. This is a strange symbiosis, as the interlocutor—largely free, after all, of deeper sins—steals a day in the spotlight, perhaps, or perhaps instead embodies modesty: we begin to love what is different from us, completely “getting” their perspective on affairs. We proudly, benignly, seek only to be servant and helper to each other. We have, after all, come to comprehend and witness just who this… this former enemy… is exactly.

The soldier’s instruction set, then, the coded message or offhand joke not entirely comprehended, is to be that lauded Embodiment: of a punchy spirit, a feisty spirit; tempted but not swayed, to maintain the requested respect; and in this, gently to mourn all the “coded messages” that were lost in the fire. That never reached the “other side”. Never reached the bishop nor the clergy, the professor nor the advisor, the confessor nor the neighborhood crowd. Because it was no joke to say, where I “take a leap of faith” you call me foolish, and where I don’t act foolish you say “take a leap of faith, mister or ma’am!”.

Therefore it is of utter gratitude, of a broad familial or social “Relevance”, to have our day job, to be those laborers quietly attending to one matter or another. In this we boast, but only as to our Boss in Heaven. We boast of newly rewritten courses, trails taken, breadcrumbs that led, to Agency, to Incorporation, to some modest Response to the request for all-out War: we lament that War, while marveling at the efficacy of its enablers. We marvel, convicted of our own longing for simply a coming together moment, “talking it through”, just “getting on the phone”. All that: today’s lesson is, bend to the conflict, adopt the pugnacious reality, be occasionally “touched” but more widely “victorious”: did the enemy, after all, wish for us in the end to win? Because of their own modesty around presenting personal sins? Because of some strange servant mentality of their own? Because we wrongly were pessimistic around signs of wonder, awe and amazement, things and promises Divine.

For, some had the experience of faith rewarded, and others like us, were cynical. Were by nature suspicious: how, after all, do I know where this or that sign or wonder comes from? This or that joke or comment… did we hate the messenger? Did we forget that bind, the unsent letter of affection most respectful, the recompense for mistakes made, the response to an enemy’s request for a “time out” to reflect and readjust: “Oh. So you were after all composed and ready for the war…” We were. And, laboring, we still are. We confess to some ambition or dream that a deadweight will not share in. A reluctant crowd will not feel the Inspiration. All entrepreneurial things, these are to be kept Secret, because of the morass, the deadweight, the reluctant demand for personal attention and flattery, for affection and beloved status. Yes, these are beloved, O patient ones, but also these are—hear the flattery—most Needed!

So our war is to cease with awaiting some Coming Together, some End Times on pause. We lance forth into our day jobs, as soldiers, as evangelists, as day laborers. And we are content, though a treasure trove has been lost or mishandled, hope springs eternal. We bear no regrets. Entire teams are damned, some would say… and that is a loss, but greater still is the Optimism and Hope, that these fraternities and sororities would hear a beckoning, an Invite, a Today… if you hear His voice… to accept, my time for repentance and membership! My time for following that trail of breadcrumbs called Faith! My acknowledgement of a symbiosis, a “Marriage”, a rewritten life, where pragmatics are perhaps made out differently for convenience, but still we recollect the teamwork, the fraternity, the sorority, the getting along. We may be that for each other, because life throws its worst at us, and our frustrations are ministered to whilst we Work and Give and Serve. Differently than some suspected. But in submission and service nonetheless. So we hearken to the War Today. In a distant filial respect for one another. For our purported enemies now seen after all to have been holding out olive branches. No longer suspicious, nor cynical, nor requesting any more Proof. Each party has their own language, and thinks the other a fool. But sometimes two opponents are Equal. And this is a new phenomenon, a strange Encounter, a look in the mirror at ourselves.