Love Even When It Hurts

Matthew 5:44-46, New International Version44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?In the years between 2010-2019, a young woman in Tennessee began to question the evangelical faith in which she had been raised. Rachel Held Evans lived in Dayton, TN and graduated from Bryan College. In addition to writing five books, she became an on-line blogger and found a community of Millennials who shared her deep concerns about a fundamental faith that rejected people on the margins, whose sexuality did not fit into the traditional categories of male and female. She also found fundamentalists who responded to her ideas with hate mail.The hateful responses hurt Rachel deeply, but she never responded in hate. In the spring of 2013, during the Lenten season, Rachel decided to turn her hate mail into something beautiful: She wrote, “For Lent his year, I wanted to learn a new creative skill that would enable me to turn something ugly into something beautiful, so I resolved on Ash Wednesday to turn some of my hate mail into origami….. it felt a little awkward at first, but as I moved my fingers across those painful words, folding them into one another to make wings, then a neck, then a crooked little beak, healing tears fell, and I let my fingers pray.”Through the next six weeks, Rachel’s family and friends joined in, learning to create a variety of “little swans and sailboats and flowers and foxes,” out of sheets of white paper printed with hate mail. She wrote about this experience in her blog: “I’ve been making origami off and on for forty days now, letting my fingers pray out and I’ve learned some things: about reverse folds and crimp folds, about trial and error, about patience, about retracing steps and following directions, about forgiveness, about letting go, about redirecting some of my anxious and self-focused energy into purposeful acts of creativity and healing, about building bridges, about asking for help.” P. 334, Braving the TruthShe wrote about this project in her blog, and one of the hate mail authors even sent her an apologetic email after reading her words.The experience deepened her faith and her relationship with God.She said, “What I learned turning my hate mail into origami is that we’re meant to remake this world together. We’re meant to hurt together, heal together, forgive together, and create together….And something tells me we would all be a little more careful, a little more gentle, if we knew how long our words linger in one another’s lives.” Pp. 335-336Rachel learned that it was not enough to love those who love you, but that we must love our enemies, that we are all both righteous and unrighteous. She created paper sculptures that became prayers for her enemies and wrote about her experience in a blog that provided a bridge of love and forgiveness.Let us pray: Dear God, we thank you for the love that you have poured out on us regardless of our worthiness. Help us to love and forgive those who have harmed us, and in so doing, bring the kingdom of heaven to our world. Amen.This devotion was written and read by Laura Derr.Quote Source: “What I Learned Turning My Hate Mail into Origami,” by Rachel Held Evans, Blog, April 1, 2013. Reprinted in Braving the Truth: Essential Essays for Reckoning and Reimagining Faith, pp. 34-336.Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: podcasts@1stchurch.org.First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.