Holy God:
we give thank that through your great love you have accepted us, you have called us your own, you have made us family with you and one another. We are so blessed to know what it means to be adopted, to receive love beyond our deserving.
Forgive us when we are tempted to put limits on your grace towards us, your grace towards others. Forgive us when we are tempted to have people or even groups of people who we wish you wouldn’t love quite so much. Each of us have a dark place in our heart, a place that catagorizes people. we are all tempted to think of those who are inside our circle and those who are outside our circle. We are more likely to care for the concerns of those we think are like us, those who are on our side.
But you have shown us repeatedly that there are no outsiders in your kingdom. You’ve kissed the leper clean. In every time and every place, the lepers have taken different form--sinners of various kinds, people of different social class, enemies near and far. You keep on making us uncomfortable by loving the wrong people. You make us even more uncomfortable by calling us to love them, too.
Stretch us. make us uncomfortable. Teach us to love beyond our loving. Teach us to make your love true, to put hands and feet to your love for the outsider.
Today, we do as you taught us. We love the unlovable. We pray for our enemies. And we rejoice, because it is in loving the outsider that we were brought in from the cold. And it is because someone prayed for your enemies that you destroyed the enmity we once had with you.
Amen.
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