Jesus teaches us to love our enemies, and I believed in this principle until an enemy tried to abduct my daughter and her friend as they walked home from school.
My daughter, Casey, was examining a series of photos with a policeman and a detective. It was a grim lineup of headshots of individuals guilty of abduction and worse. Each image felt like a small window into hell.
"Take your time and see if any faces look like the person driving the car," Officer Whittaker advised.
"It was a man, so you can remove all the pictures of women. He was skinny and had no beard," Casey whispered.
Casey is 14, and our house is less than a mile from her school. The path connecting our neighborhood to the school seemed safe until two days ago. Casey was walking home with a friend, just eight houses from our driveway, when a man in a black Honda started circling them. He drove by slowly, watching them, turned around, drove by again, then stopped beside them. The man’s intentions were clear from the security footage: he planned to abduct them, but they managed to flee.
That day, two people saved my daughter. The first was a County Sheriff named Mitchel, who lives on our street. He had taken the day off to wash his windows, which face the path Casey and her friend were on. The second was Mrs. Smithton, the mother of Casey’s friend, who came out looking for her daughter when she didn’t come home on time.
Had it been any other day, or had Mitchel and Mrs. Smithton not acted, the outcome would have been much worse.
Mitchel, realizing what was happening, acted quickly. The girls were trying to escape, but the man reversed his car to keep pace with them. Mitchel drove toward them, and Mrs. Smithton approached from the opposite direction. Spooked, the man drove away, and the girls were safe.
As Casey looked through the lineup, she felt scared, and I felt sick. Learning about the horrific acts and active sex trafficking rings around us shook my trust in our safety for months.
Eventually, life returned to normal. Casey went back to school, my wife to work, and I to the book I was writing about loving our enemies. But I couldn’t write. The words and prayers wouldn’t come. I struggled to understand Jesus’ teaching. How could I love the man who tried to take Casey? I knelt to pray for guidance, but only tears and anger came.
Have you ever faced evil in your life? Has your neighborhood changed? Perhaps you've experienced a break-in or an attack. What do we do when anger takes hold? How do we pray for our enemies when we can't find the words?
For me, the answer came with time. There was no dramatic revelation, just a gradual realization. We never caught the man, but I learned that such individuals are often desperate for money or drugs. He was an abductor, but he was also desperate.
I stopped calling him "Abductor" and started calling him "Desperate." This change shifted something in me. The distance between enemy and friend is vast, but God gives us the power to close it by renaming our enemies.
Throughout history, God has renamed people to signify their new roles and identities. Abram became Abraham, Sarai became Sarah, Jacob became Israel, Simon became Peter, and Saul became Paul. These name changes were not for Jesus but for us. Jesus loves Saul and Paul equally, but we find it easier to love Paul.
By renaming the abductor "Desperate," I found a seed of compassion. The distance between me and "Abductor" was too great, but the distance to "Desperate" was shorter. As my prayers returned, I realized that I, too, am desperate—for a savior.
We all have someone we don't like, whether it's a school board member, a homeowner’s association manager, or a church deacon. We often label them in ways that make it hard to love them. What if we renamed them? This simple act can reduce the distance between enemy and friend, helping us to love those Jesus died for.
People like me, the County Sheriff, you, and those who have hurt you are all desperate for a savior. We must learn to love them as Jesus does.