relationships and community on Enemies

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must...

Cherish your enemies; they may be blessings in disguise.

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

During my training [as a therapist], a supervisor once told me, “There’s something likable in everyone,” and to my great surprise, I found that she was right. It’s impossible to get to know people dee...

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth: deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us a...

Our enemies are not our circumstances or our neighborhoods or our bosses. Our focus on the theater of Christ’s glory complements our earthly callings; it does not distract us from them. Christ’s glory...

One elderly monk in his community used to show his displeasure with other monks in a highly creative way. As you may know, most monastic communities chant the psalms several times a day together in ch...

Jesus said to love our enemies. I thought I’d get off easy because I don’t have any real “enemies.” I mean, I’m not mad at North Korea or Russia or China. And I don’t think they’re mad at me. After al...

Always forgive your enemies -- nothing annoys them so much.

One of the costliest requirements of Christlike love is Jesus’s call to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5: 44). What does this look like for Christians in today’s world...

We may not be able to prevent other people from being our enemies, but we can prevent ourselves from being enemies toward others.

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we...

An enemy is one whose story we have not heard.

[Christians] are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’ sake.

Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring ...

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. Wh...

If a man is forever concerned first and foremost with his own interests then he is bound to collide with others. If for any man life is a competition…then he will always think of other human beings as...

Nature teaches us to love our friends, but religion our enemies.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.

God our Father We confess to you and to one another That we have been quick to anger And slow to mercy We have paid back abuse with abuse Hatred with hatred And violence with violence The world does n...

The invincible weapon against all our enemies is humility.

Sometimes, the Christian faith can be confounding to the outside world. Enemies can become friends, even to the point of caring for and protecting each other. In this short story from the small Africa...

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbor.

Gracious God, today we think of those we have ignored when they were suffering, excluded when they different, written off when they were difficult, harassed when they were our enemies. We take this mo...

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Lord Jesus, you send us out into the world in your name, but we prefer to stay safely behind. We are nervous, and unmotivated, and uncertain. We love to think about how you love us, but we are much mo...

Paul tells the bride in Ephesians 6:10-12 that her enemies are 'not...flesh and blood,' but the unseen spiritual forces of evil and darkness. She is called to arm herself for battle, to 'b...

Prayer is the great engine to overthrow and rout my spiritual enemies, the great means to procure the graces of which I stand in hourly need.