The Christian faith calls us to love both our friends and our enemies. We are to love others, whether or not they are people we like and who like us. What a call this is! How can I love this way, when my own heart is so divided, when I am so weak and selfish — and so wounded?
I believe that God accepts our feeble efforts to love (and to forgive, which is the companion of loving), and I take courage from these verses taken from W. H. Auden’s poem, “As I Walked Out One Evening”:
O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart.
We love as we can, and we pray to be transformed into the likeness of Christ, so that we may love, no longer with our “crooked heart,” but with the heart of God.