Since nothing from yesterday's reading of Leviticus seemed to jump off the page at me, I am going back to Exodus for today's blog. Specifically, I am going back to Exodus 23, verses 4-5, which read as follows:
If you come across your enemy's ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help them with it.
These verses have stuck with me for the past few days, largely because they seem to prescribe a level of responsibility for doing good that goes far beyond what we normally think.
Typically, it seems as though we feel no obligation to help someone we don't know, much less people whom we would describe as enemies. Think about it for a minute - when was the last time you saw someone pulled over alongside the road with a flat tire? How many people had stopped to help? Did you stop to help? We often assume that they "have it under control" or we plead that we do not have the time/skills to help.
Yet if we seek to learn from Exodus 23:4-5, it is not a matter of choice. We are not allowed to pass by evil or oppression or a hurting neighbor and plead ignorance. We are not permitted to say, "That doesn't concern me." If it is happening to someone around us, it concerns us - whether it is our enemy or our friend.
When you think about it, this is the law of love. To borrow the title from Rob Bell's latest book, the good news is that "Love wins." And once we realize that love wins, we should become motivated to live out that truth in our day to day lives - NOT out of a sense of obligation but out of a desire to show others - even our worst enemies - that, in the end, love does win.
jB
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