Not by Sight The 'dead to me' list

Jan 21, 2014

I’ve read that the Clintons have a “dead to me” list. Specifically, it seems that Hillary does in regards to her presidential campaign. I guess it would actually be a “dead to us” list because the Clintons seem to be known for their cohesiveness when it comes to achieving political goals.

And of course, the whole thing may just be a rumor—either way, though, that’s not quite the point anyhow.

Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of appeal in making a “dead to me” list.

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” can be quite a handy tool. A good way to “keep track.”
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 a 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; and it seems rather easy when you think about it from that perspective doesn’t it?  Christ did the hard work, we just need to follow his example with prayer.

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