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"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you."
(Matthew 5:43-44)
Lesli White in her article, "What the Nativity Reveals to People of Faith", introduced me to Sam Beeson's book, A Rare Nativity. Beeson puts a unique twist on "The Twelve Days of Christmas". The narrator holds onto a strong grudge and refuses to forgive his enemy. Out of spite and revenge, he sends his enemy twelve gifts for Christmas, but these are not the kind of gifts anyone would want. For example, he sends a briar, two rotten eggs, nails, glass, broken tools, etc. The beginning of the book reads, "On the first night of Christmas, I gave my enemy a briar from a tanglewood tree. On the second night of Christmas, I gave my enemy two rotten eggs." You get the picture, and it is not a pretty one.
After the twelfth night, the narrator of the story feels justified and empowered by his harmful "gifts". He dreams of how his enemy will suffer and be devastated by his clever retaliation. But what happens next leaves the narrator frozen in his ice of revenge. He hears a knock on the door, and when he opens it, he sees a gift for him lying on the ground. His enemy had taken all of the gifts given in spite and created quite a masterpiece overnight. With the discarded and broken gifts, the enemy crafted a Nativity scene and placed it at the doorstep of his antagonist, along with a note asking for forgiveness. The narrator's frozen heart begins to melt as a result of the kind response of his enemy. "He turned the other cheek and made my ugliness a gem. And by doing so, pointed me to lovely Bethlehem."
Drawing from this powerful anecdote, Lesli White states:
"The story reminds us that Christmas isn't about holiday stress, how many gifts are sitting under the tree, or holding grudges. Christmas is about forgiveness. . . . But even though we desperately want forgiveness to be about us, it isn't. The ability to forgive others is rooted in being forgiven ourselves. The Bible tells us that God loved the world so much that he sent His only Son so that we would be forgiven. God provides a way for us to be forgiven, through Jesus' birth. God's plan of salvation is seen through this beautiful nativity story. He sent Jesus into the world as a sacrifice for our sins."
Jesus taught us to do good to those who hate us. I believe the best good we could possibly do to those who hate us and have harmed us is to forgive them.
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