Your hair is on fire…

Proverbs 25

²¹ If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat,
and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,
²²for you will heap burning coals on his head,
and the LORD will reward you.

Bible Knowledge Commentary says, “Kindness to one’s enemy-giving him food and water-is like heaping burning coals on his head (quoted by Paul in Rom. 12:20). Sometimes a person’s fire went out and he needed to borrow some live coals to restart his fire. Giving a person coals in a pan to carry home “on his head” was a neighborly, kind act; it made friends, not enemies. Also the kindness shown in giving someone food and water makes him ashamed of being an enemy, and brings God’s blessing on the benefactor. Compassion, not revenge, should characterize believers (cf. Prov. 24:29). Alternately, light on this passage may come from an Egyptian expiation ritual, in which a person guilty of some wrongdoing would carry a pan of burning coals on his head as a sign of his repentance. Thus treating one’s enemy kindly may cause him to repent.”

What I love most about the Bible is how it is so counterintuitive to the ways of this world. It never ceases to amaze me how it can totally contradict what we would feel is the right way to handle a situation. Here, in Proverbs 25 we see that the best way to deal with an enemy is to show them kindness. It even goes on to say that when we do they will be shamed into repentance. It doesn’t matter if you are in your car, at the grocery store, and the little league field with the kids, at church, at work, at the movies, there will be a point in your day when someone is going to take you to the edge. Remember this passage, kill them with kindness, do the opposite of your fleshly instincts. In doing so, you will at the very least please God, and in the process maybe even make a friend.

God, thank you for being different from this world. I pray that today, when the opportunity presents itself, I will be able to love on someone who needs it.