Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not. Romans 12:14
Easier said than done.
In the world, it’s fine to curse people. People do that to one another all the time.
We are not thinking of curses of Satanic origin, although, that might very well influence us.
Many of us were raised that way from a young age saying or thinking things like:
That person is an idiot. What a dummy. He doesn’t know anything at all.
and all sorts of other cursed things.
This morning, in the Proverbs chapter of the day, this jumped out:
He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack: but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse. Proverbs 28:27
What if we thought of these people we are cursing or that we cannot stand as the poor?
They definitely are in many respects.
What if we blessed them instead, as a form of giving to the poor?
What if we did not hide our eyes from them, but prayed and gave them blessings from the Lord?
Would that not please the Lord?
It most definitely would.
But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again;
and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest:
for He is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Luke 6:35
It’s not easy to love the unlovely. They are ugly. They have faults that can be so difficult to overlook.
We must try. God loves them. God wants us to love our neighbor as ourselves.
What if we were the strange ones who always said or did the wrong things?
What if we didn’t bathe and stank or had atrocious social skills that turned others off?
Jesus was kind to the evil and the unthankful.
This is not something we can do on our own: Love others out of obedience to the Lord.
It’s a tough job. We cannot do that without the help of the Lord Jesus. It’s utterly impossible.
These people are too difficult.
If we self-reflect, we can think of a time we said or did the wrong thing. What if we almost always did?
Then we would be like the unlovely. How would we want people to treat us if we messed up all the time?