Love Your Enemies

 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' ⁴⁴But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. ⁴⁶ For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸ You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."  - Matthew 5:43-48 (ESV)

Dear whoever is reading this,
     First of all, hello and thank you for reading this.  Upon reading this passage, I wondered what the real meaning of enemy is because you naturally hate your enemies, which God doesn't want us to do.  The definition of enemy is as follows:  one that is antagonistic to another; especially : one seeking to injure, overthrow, or confound an opponent.  So your enemy is the person who is against you in everything and would like to see nothing more than your ultimate failure.  Jesus says to love this person(s), because it is harder to perform loving your enemy than loving your BFFL.  I am not going to lie, that is difficult.  I don't try to be antagonistic to other people, persae, but some people I cannot be around because I will just protest against them because of their actions.  I know I need to love that person.  That is quite hard.  The nice thing about this passage though is that it doesn't say, "make them your bestest friend in the whole wide world."  It simply says to love them.  This is the definition of love according to Merriam-Webster:   strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties.  I slightly disagree with this definition because I think that love can just be a simple respect and polite and helpful.  I don't think it has to be outrageous obsession.  So to sum this up, I need to learn to love my enemies no matter what they do to me or my family.
regan henry.