Dead To Me

I read that the Clintons have a “dead to me” list.

Or maybe it is a “dead to us” list. They are, after all, a machine when it comes to politics so I imagine this list is some combined effort (he adds one, she adds one and maybe even Chelsea adds a few) based upon all their experiences over the past few decades.

And of course, the whole thing may just be a rumor—but between you and me, somehow I don’t think so.

Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of appeal in making a “dead to me” list so if it is true, I imagine theirs might be very long, indeed.

Actually, whose wouldn’t be of some length?

It is so easy for us to take our hurts and our pains and turn them into such a list; it is only natural to see the injustices and the slings and arrows of life as a battle cry for retribution and retaliation.

So a “dead to me” list can be quite a handy tool.

Of course, living as a Christian means that while we may very well create a “dead to me” list, we then have to turn around and pray for every person that made it onto our list.

Bummer, huh?

It’s becomes our job to take those who are “dead to us” and make them alive in Christ.

That, after all, is what Jesus calls us to do: pray for our enemies. Sometimes our enemies are fairly obvious: they are the ones who have made life difficult—they have caused us to stumble and fall. Other times, our enemies aren’t as crystal clear to us; they haven’t been outright offenders but they have brought grief to us all the same. We’d have much preferred not to have had them in our lives.

I can’t help but think that at one point we were all on the heavenly “dead to me”list until Jesus did the unthinkable. He removed us from that list through the supreme, almost-unthinkable act of self-sacrifice.

And now all that is asked of us is to pray for our enemies—those people who are on our “dead to me” lists.

It seems rather easy when you think about it that way, doesn’t it?

Cheryl Dickow
www.BezalelBooks.com