Wana traced the outline of her hand on a piece of paper.
The activity seemed simple. During a Love Your Enemy lesson, the children were asked to think about ways they could show love and forgiveness to other people. But for Wana, the exercise brought something much more personal to the surface.
She already had people in mind.
Before the lesson, Wana shared that she still carried hurt toward people she considered her enemies. Forgiveness can sound straightforward when we talk about it in a classroom. It becomes much more difficult when there is a face attached to the word enemy—someone who has actually hurt us, disappointed us, or given us a reason to hold on to what happened.
Then Wana heard again how Jesus responded to the people who mistreated Him.
“Even when people treated Him badly, He still prayed for them,” she reflected.
There is something challenging about that observation because Wana noticed what many of us would rather overlook. Jesus did not simply teach His followers to love their enemies. He demonstrated what that love looks like when loving someone is difficult.
Jesus said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27–28). Those are beautiful words until we have someone to apply them to.
Wana was beginning to understand that.
When Forgiveness Becomes Personal
Loving like Jesus does not mean pretending we were never hurt. Forgiveness does not suddenly make an offense acceptable or erase the consequences of someone’s actions. But Jesus shows us that the people who hurt us do not have to determine what grows inside us afterward.
We can carry an offense until it becomes bitterness. We can return hurt for hurt. We can allow resentment to shape the way we see another person.
Or we can learn another response.
For Wana, that response began with looking at Jesus.
By the end of the lesson, she shared that she wanted to forgive the people she had considered her enemies. She wanted to choose kindness and prayer instead of continuing to hold on to her hurt. More importantly, she wanted to learn to love others the way God loves people.
That may sound like a small decision made during a children’s activity. But we have seen enough conflict to know that what people learn to do with their hurt matters.
Unforgiven wounds rarely stay in one place. Hurt can move through friendships, families, and communities. One offense can become another. Children can grow up learning whom they are supposed to distrust or hate, sometimes inheriting conflicts that began long before they were born.
What happens when they learn another way?
A Different Kind of Inheritance
This is part of what Love Your Enemy is about.
We want children like Wana to encounter the teachings of Jesus before bitterness becomes normal and retaliation becomes instinctive. We want them to discover that there is another way to respond to hurt—not because the hurt is insignificant, but because Jesus offers them something stronger than revenge.
That is how cycles can begin to change.
Peace does not always begin around a negotiating table or after a conflict has already erupted. Sometimes it begins much earlier, in the heart of a child learning what to do when someone hurts her.
Wana began the activity by tracing her hand. By the end, she was thinking about what those hands—and ultimately her life—could do differently because of Jesus.
She could choose not to strike back. She could show kindness. She could forgive. She could pray for someone she once called an enemy.
And perhaps that is where learning to love like Jesus begins for all of us. Not with an abstract idea about loving humanity, but with an actual person we find difficult to love.
Wana’s lesson leaves us with the same uncomfortable invitation Jesus gave His disciples:
Who is the person we would rather hold at a distance, but Jesus is teaching us to love?
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