During the war (WWII I believe) a young pilot was on a mission, in which he was flying solo. This was one of his first missions, so as you can imagine he was more than a little nervous. Things went all right for a little while, but then he heard something that made his nervousness turn into sheer terror. He heard what seemed to him like a munching sound, and when he looked down, sure enough, there was a rat making lunch out of the wires of his plane. Being several miles up in the air, and knowing that every wire on the plane was critical for his survival, he did the one thing his Momma had taught him to do - he prayed.

As he prayed for guidance, he heard a still small voice inside of him say, "fly higher and kill the rat." At first this did not make sense, but as the munching grew louder, so did the voice inside of him. This time he heard, "put on your oxygen mask, fly higher and kill the rat." Then it registered with him what the Holy Spirit was saying. If he flew higher, the oxygen in the air would be much, much less. With his mask on, nothing would happen to him, but the rat would die due to lack of oxygen, and the wires of the plane would be safe.

He did as he was told, soon the rat was dead, and he completed his mission with no further incidents.

We all have things in our lives that, from time to time, eat away at us. Most of the time, we tend to try to rid ourselves of these problems in our own strength, and on the level of the one(s) perptrating the problem. As Jesus stated in the Sermon on the Mount about turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, and giving your cloak as well as your coat, and Paul mentioned in 1 Corinthians 6:7 about not taking fellow believers to court, we must opt to take the high road, not fight our enemy on his own turf. We must follow Jesus example and love our enemy and those who persecute us. If we don't the "rat" will constantly come back and chew on our wires. Love, unconditional love, destroys his ability to do that.