A Salvation Army officer stationed in New Zealand tells of an old Maori woman who won the name Warrior Brown for her fighting ability when she was drunk or enraged. After her conversion to Christianity, she was asked to give her testimony at an open-air meeting. One of her old enemies took the opportunity to loudly make fun of her. He ended his harangue by throwing a large potato at her, which hit her with a nasty blow.

The crowd grew deadly silent. A week earlier, the cowardly insulter would have needed to sprint into hiding to salvage his teeth. But what a different response they witnessed that night!

Warrior picked up the potato without a word and put it in her pocket. No more was heard of the incident until the harvest festival came around, when she appeared with a little sack of potatoes to share. She explained she had cut up and planted the potato and was now presenting it to the Lord as part of her increase.

Warrior had learned how to live in peace with her neighbors and yet be a strong spiritual "warrior" for the Lord's cause. What a beautiful example of taking the ill people do and turning it into praise for the Father in Heaven!

President Lincoln was once taken to ask for his amiable attitude toward his enemies. "Why do you try to make friends with them?" asked an associate. "You are a powerful man. You should try to destroy them."

"Am I not destroying my enemies," Lincoln gently replied, "when I make them my friends?"

What might you do today to show kindness to an enemy? When you treat your enemy as a friend, and your enemy responds in friendship, you have turned your enemy into a friend.

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