Love Your Enemies
by Travis Antonich
Happy Sabbath children. It’s me Travis with Downey Seventh-day Adventist Church. Hope you’ve all had an awesome week so far. I feels like I haven’t seen you guys in a while. And that’s because we had VBS. But I’m so glad to see you again. Even if it’s just a video, I know you’re out there. But hope you’re all doing well. I heard many of you have started school. And that’s always a very exciting time. And I know a lot of you are going into school now, which is even more exciting.
So my story today is actually about a little girl. That was that was just about to start the first grade. Her name was Olive. It Olive. It was Sunday, and she was starting her first day of school on that Monday. So she was got all her things ready. Her parents even bought her a nice orange balloon. lunch pail. She was so excited about that. Olive just could not wait. So she went to bed. And she even woke up early in the morning as she went running to her parents who she said Mom, Dad, can I Can you take me to school already? He said no. They said it’s 4 the morning. They got to sleep a little more if school doesn’t start till later. So she went back to bed. And finally she woke up. Her parents took her to school. There she was starting the first grade. Olive was so excited.
And so she gets into her classroom and all the students are there and she she meets some students and some friends she had before and preschool and everything was going great. Olive was so happy. And then came recess their little break time. So recess came and they went outside. And all it went right into the jungle gym and the jungle gym had a little sandbox. She ran over there and she see the girl sitting in there.
So Olive ran over there. She said Hi, my name is Olive. And the girl looked at her and she did not smile. She just turned back and ignored her.
Olive thought maybe she didn’t hear me. Maybe she didn’t see me. Since he ran up a little closer to her. She said Hi. My name is Olive. She put her hand out like her parents taught her to shake her hand. The girl looked at Olive and she said Don’t talk to me Don’t come close to me and she looked away. And that was it. This made Olive sad because all I thought she was gonna make all the friends today. But now there’s someone that didn’t want to be her friend. So all of her feelings a little hurt. But she went along with her other friends and continued playing for recess. The bell rang and they all had to go back in the classroom. In all it was just sitting there at her desk, wondering what she could have done. Maybe differently so that the girl would have liked her and want it to be her friend.
So lunchtime came in all it was so excited. She got her little orange balloon lunch pail she ran out and she seemed a little there was like a little tree with some shades so she decided to take her lunch over there. She seen all the kids. Some kids brought their own lunch some kids went off and got the cafeteria food and all that was about to start eating her sandwich you see all live parents made her a peanut butter jelly sandwich. And they as she liked it so that they would cut it in half diagonally. You guys like it when you like like to eat your sandwiches like that when they cut it diagonally and you have two pieces. Olive loved that. So she pulled out her pb&j sandwich. And she seemed a little girl over there by herself. She didn’t eat at all. At all. Olive looked a little closer. And it was that girl in the sandbox. She was all alone. She could tell she had an eight because all the other kids had food in their hands. Olive ran over there. Her sandwiches are wrapped in plastic If she gave her she offered her part of her sandwich.
And the girl looked up at her and she was so happy. And she ended up telling her her name, she said, Hi, I’m Patricia.
She said I’m sorry about earlier, I was just really mad because I forgot my lunch at home. And so Olive and Patricia sat down and ate their lunch together. And when Olive came home, she told her parents all about the new friend she made, who she thought was her enemy. At the beginning.
You see kids, sometimes you’re going to meet mean people in school or in life, you’re going to meet people that don’t like you don’t want to talk to you, they might make fun of you. But that doesn’t mean we have to treat them the same way. You see, God wants us to treat even our enemies with love. Watch. In the Bible. It says in Matthew chapter 5, verse 44, Jesus said, But I say to you, says love your enemies. bless those who curse you. do good to those who hate you. And pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. And so if you meet someone that might be a little mean, might not be so nice as you pray for them. And continue to treat them as good as you can. Because you never know what someone else is going through. Like Patricia. She was only mean because she forgot her lunch. And once she got her lunch, she was a lot nicer to Olive.
So I hope you guys all have a great start to your school year. Let me go ahead and give you guys a prayer. Let’s pray. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we’re so thankful, Lord for this beautiful day, Lord. We’re so glad, Lord, that you can teach us such great lessons on how to treat others. Even those lower that might not be so nice to us. Lord, we’re so thankful that you’ve given us direction of how to treat others with love and respect. Lord, I pray that all these children starting school Lord, you will protect them and you will guide them and you will help them to meet a lot of people and make lots of friends, Lord, so be with them and their families do the rest of this week at the seventh day. In Jesus name I pray, amen.
Alright kids. I’ll see you next time. God bless you