Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself预览

Example #3: Elisha put his enemies to shame by organizing a great feast

Reading the story about Elisha and the Syrian soldiers, I can’t help but smile. How ironic it is that the soldiers come to arrest the prophet Elisha, but are ‘defeated’ by his generosity. The last verse of the story proves that Elisha’s ‘tactics’ worked very well, for “the Syrians did not come again on raids into the land of Israel”.

But I think this was more than a clever trick to get rid of the Syrians. Elisha was ‘loving his enemies’ because God wanted him to treat his captives well. Treating your enemies as welcome guests is ridiculous, but it somehow shows Who God is.

In Matthew 22, Jesus tells a parable. He compares God’s Kingdom to a wedding feast where everybody is invited, “both bad and good”. The problem is that the people who were first invited, don’t want to come! Some people reject God’s love — and the consequences are horrible. Others, who certainly didn’t consider themselves worthy to be wedding guests, accepted the invitation as undeserved grace.

Do you accept God’s generous offer of forgiveness? Can you think of ways in which you can show others a glimpse of God’s generosity and love for people who don’t deserve it?