The Meaning of Praying for One's Enemies

Praying for our enemies does not break their hearts, nor will it change their nature. That is not what the prayer of forgiveness is about. To pray for your enemy will instead break your heart, it will shatter your inner sense of justice, the essense of your own worth.

Forgiveness runs opposite to our own human nature, this can be shattering as we face our own inner emptiness. Because forgiveness is so contrary to our own natures we understand that only through our own brokeness can the Divine Spark ignite our cold hearts so that in our agony we face, God.

Praying for our enemies is not so much about changing them, rather it will transform you. Therefore our prayers should never be about 'changing this or that person' for that is beyond our capacity and our power and in a subtle way it is manipulative. We cannot manipulate God.

Sincere prayer for one's enemies stops us from becoming that which we hate, " Be careful, lest in fighting the dragon you become the dragon." When a soul begins to hate, the love within withers and dies and we will have become, the hater. From this comes the barren fruits of spite, malice and envy.

Forgiveness is not about 'letting go and letting God' what it is- is a surrender to the Divine whose fluidity transforms our souls. It is a conscious decision not of negation but of co-operation with the Spirit of God to become more than who we are. When we forgive we become the promise of who we were born to be.

When we forgive we are not condoning the evil done nor is it a compliance in accepting the status quo, a false peace. It instead becomes a force that even in the midst of great evil, the perpetrators stand alone against those they wound, till the wounded become the Victors. For if we do not pray for our enemies, what hope then is there for each of us?

Unforgiveness maintains our humaness and asks only that we remain as we are, to remain unchanged.

Forgiveness shatters the walls of self protection and illuminates and transforms our souls into the living reflection of The Divine.

Till we acknowledge that we are broken, we shall remain distant from God. A stranger in a foreign land, unkowing of the language of love.