Loving our enemies

“But love your enemies, do good to them and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.” Luke 6:35
Loving our enemies is not easy. Yet it is a command that Jesus gives us – and something that we can do, through the Holy Spirit. We don’t have to like them, but we are to love them – to put their needs ahead of our own and do right by them. We see a similar passage in Matt. 5:43-48, but there are some differences in this passage in Luke (in fact, some commentators think that the two passages actually arise from two different occasions where Jesus was teaching His disciples).
The major thing I want to pick up on here is the reason Jesus gives us as to why we should love our enemies. That reason is because God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked, so if we are His children, we should do the same.
Ingratitude is one of the hardest attitudes to deal with. Although we can demand that someone say ‘Thank you’, there is nothing you can do to make them grateful. If we feel indignant when people are ungrateful toward us, how much more do you think God feels – when people refuse to acknowledge His blessings, His sovereignty, or even His existence? Yet He still provides them with food, shelter, oxygen, etc. Is it too much for Jesus to ask us to do good to our enemies?