Amazing Animals: Loving Enemies

Amazing Animals: Loving Enemies

Bible Blast: Read Matthew 5:43-48

If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. Matthew 5:47

A camera crew had been watching and filming the life of Legadema, a young leopard in Botswana, Africa. On one particular day, they filmed her as she stealthily attacked and killed an adult baboon for dinner. Baboons are enemies of leopards and one of their main food sources, so this wasn’t an unusual sight for the cameramen. But what happened next was extraordinary.

After an animal makes a kill, it’s common for hyenas to gather around hoping for some leftovers, and that’s exactly what happened when Legadema got the baboon. In order to keep her meal from the scavengers, she took it up into a tree. Suddenly a tiny sound came from the grass below. Legadema looked down and saw a tiny baby baboon, now an orphan. Legadema shocked them all when she walked over to it, sniffed it, and lay down beside it.

When Legadema noticed the hyenas’ interest in the baby baboon, she picked it up by the scruff of its neck and carried it up the tree, out of harm’s way. The observers watched in wonder as Legadema mothered the orphan all through the night. If it fell out of the tree, she jumped down and carried it back up to safety. She lay beside the baby to keep it warm.

We could learn a thing or two from Legadema.

Do you ever find yourself not wanting to talk to someone because she’s different from you? Did you ever have a person hurt you or your family to the point that you instantly dislike anyone who reminds you, even a little, of the person who hurt you? It may be something as trivial as the same skin color as that person who hurt you.

God doesn’t want us to play favorites with people. As it says in today’s Bible Blast, if you’re mean to your enemies, how does that set you apart from anyone else in the world? All people naturally want to be unkind to those who hurt them, but it takes a special, strong person to show love toward someone who doesn’t return the favor.

Girl Gab: Who do you need to show love to today? Is there a type of person you have a hard time loving? Ask God to help you love all kinds of people, no matter who they are, what they look like, or where they come from.