I love the time that I have with my kids in the car (well, most of the time).  More than pretty much any other time we are together, car time is my chance to talk to my kids, impart all my wisdom (ha!) and sing songs.  Car time is awesome!  My kids are totally hostage to mom.  They’re even strapped down!

Lately we’ve talked quite a bit about the fact that if someone is not acting nice, it’s probably because they are hurting in some way.  And if they’re hurting, we need to do everything we can to show them love and friendship to maybe help them feel and act better.  One day last week, I had my oldest son and a friend in the car, and they were talking about a kid they know that isn’t very nice.  I asked them how they could be nice to the child and show him love.  This was a hard question for them to answer.  The friend said that he says hi to the boy, and I said that was good.  Then we talked about more ways that the kids could go out of their way to make this kid feel better.  But it was difficult for the kids to think about these things and even see that they were valid responses to the way they and other kids had been treated.

It struck me in this conversation how hard it is to love our enemies sometimes.  And sometimes we think we are doing a really good job by just not being mean back.  But to truly make a difference in our enemy’s life, we need to be looking for ways to help him, love him, and make things better for him.  To go above and beyond and be intentional.  Instead of avoiding the person and the problem, we might should find ways to be around this person and do nice things for them.

In church yesterday, the sermon was about love.  At one point, our minister said that we have all been enemies of Christ and were apart from him.  But he loved us and was willing to do what it took to bring us back to him and close the gap between us.  God didn’t give up on us, and we shouldn’t give up on our enemies.