It is
Friday. Praise the Lord indeed. The Lord blessed us some very
friendly showers last night, watering the land and thus causing the May flowers
to bloom. The Lord blessed us with a fantastic Thursday, sunny and
warm. At the school, the signboard said that the temperature reading
reached 80 degrees (lower 70s would be more accurate). I drove around the
county and mountainside for some bird watching and gazing at the spring flowers
and passing by the cattle "on a thousand Hills", grazing
unhurried and unbothered. The Lord blessed us with a spectacular time
during our release time yesterday. It is a great thrill to interact withe
children with the good News of Jesus our Lord. Alice and I walked on
the good green turf surrounding Lovell Field last evening, feeling the
softness of the earth, which the Lord god has created with much love for
us.
We
are getting ready for Sunday. We will meet at 10 AM for Sunday School and
at 11:00 AM for worship. There will be a church wide fellowship
dinner after the morning worship. We will have the assortment foods
including Swedish, Italian and Indian.
The
local School district where Alice teaches will be closed for Spring break next
week. We are planning to visit our grandchildren in Boston next
week. Our grandchildren are counting the days and so are we.
I was deeply moved and provoked as I read the following story. On a Sunday morning in 2013,
two Muslim suicide bombers entered All Saints' Church in Peshawar, Pakistan and
detonated explosives, killing 127 men, women, and children. 250 were
wounded. Because it's a Muslim state, those who were Christians in that
church were the oppressed minority of that particular area. There were no
jobs for them apart from the jobs that nobody else wanted. There was no
safety net for their wounds, for their funerals. There were no social
services: there was no one in the society to help them along.
So
on Monday, the day after the bombing, the people at the church came back and
gathered the Sunday School papers that had been spread by the bomb, and they gathered
the shoes of the children murdered and wounded so they could be used by others
who needed them. Then they washed the walls of the blood of their
families and friends. As they did so, even the secular report said their
wails of agony pierced the silence of the indifferent neighborhood around
them. Then, when the walls were clean, they arranged the pews and sat and
began to sing songs of praise to God.
Why?
Because they remembered their charter. The church, established over 100
years before, had said from its outset, "This church is to be a witness
for Christ in a major Islamic city." They believed they truly would
do what the psalmist had said so long ago: that they would enthrone Christ in
the praises of his people. They would be a witness to the greatness and the
goodness of their God—particularly in the face of tragedy—if they would
continue to praise him in the midst of agony and oppression, so that all the
world could see our God is not going to be stopped ..
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