I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read, “God bless the whole world—without exceptions.” You see variations on that theme from time to time. I always want to catch the driver and thank them for their desire that God bless George W. Bush, Sarah Palin and the Republican Party, and then see what they say; and then to follow that up by asking them what they understand a prayer to bless Osama bin Laden, Ayman al’Zawahiri, and al’Qaeda to mean. For my part, I know what it would mean for God to bless Osama—it would mean to bless him with repentance and to bring him to worship the one true God of the universe—but somehow I tend to doubt that those folks would agree with me.
Still, that bumper sticker catches in my mind because it makes me uncomfortable, and not for the reason you might think. The truth is, I don’t think I would ever put that on my car, not because I object to what people would assume it meant about my political leanings, but rather because I could never live up to it. Taken seriously, that’s a powerful gospel prayer—and I couldn’t claim to mean it consistently enough. I have too much Jonah in me. Some days, I can feel pretty good about the command to us to love our enemies . . . but that’s only when I don’t really have any enemies around. At times when I’ve actually been suffering, I’ve been much less sanguine about that. God send me grace to love my enemies when I actually have them.