How can we love our enemies?

​Jesus commands us to love our enemies. For too long I've seen that as a command to bury my hate and accept people I don't like for who they are.

I wonder if that command isn't more about getting to know the things people hate about themselves, things they've buried deep inside, things that surface on the outside in ways that make it easy for them to appear unlikable to me.

Things that make them look like my enemy.

I suppose that's the power of compassion. Of empathy. It allows me to like what people are overcoming more than I dislike who they've become.

After all, this love Jesus has for me, it's rooted far more in his compassion for what I'm overcoming than who I've become.

Because I confess, there are days I can look pretty unlikable. There are days I can look like an enemy of Jesus and not his friend.

Yet, he loves me anyways.

Jesus commands us to love our enemies.

Thank God, every single day, he shows me exactly how that's done.