Grains of Sand

Pixabay The media seldom reports on the persecution of Christians around the world. If we search the internet for information on the subject we come up with a number of organizations that speak for those who, for the most part, are not able to speak for themselves. The  Bible League Canada  estimates that there are as many as 100 million Christians suffering persecution.  Open Doors USA  says that 1 in 9 believers experience some form of persecution. One site posts that every day some 300 people are killed for their faith in Jesus. Perhaps the best known agency,  The Voice of the Martyrs , offers a variety of ways by which those of us who know little of being persecuted for our beliefs, can help those in places where being a Christian is a death sentence. The pilgrims of Peter's day understood persecution in a way that few of us can. In 1 Peter 4:12 to 19, Peter encourages them to rejoice in their suffering. What an odd thing to say! " Dear friends,...

Pixabay Everyone wants to be great—even if it is just a little bit! That’s what makes it so hard to be the one who always ends up cleaning the litter box. It just doesn’t jive with greatness. I don’t think there were litter boxes in Jesus’ day, but if there had been He’d be the one cleaning them out. Talk of the kingdom had put delusions of grandeur in the heads of some of Jesus’ disciples—and their relatives. On one occasion, the mother of James and John came to Jesus to ask Him to put her sons in positions of greatness when He established His kingdom (Matthew 20:21). Jesus’ reply would not have been understood until later. He said “ You don’t know what you are asking…Can you drink the cup I am going to drink? ” (20:22). They were thinking Bordeaux, and He was meaning suffering, when they replied, “ We can ” (20:22). This conversation, fueled by the furor of the others when they realized that someone else had thought to make the request before they did, led to a teaching opportuni...

Pixabay Has anyone ever asked you who you think is the person who has made the greatest contribution to society? Answering the question is made easier if I specify the field in which this person has contributed. If I specify the medical field, someone will suggest a particular doctor or researcher. For example, Alexander Fleming is famous as the discoverer of penicillin. In the area of technology, another Alexander, as in Graham Bell, might get the nod for the telephone, the great-great-granddaddy of the cell phone. If I mention sports, James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, might come to mind. But the answers to these questions will certainly be varied. Not everyone thinks of (or is old enough to think of ) a Fleming, a Bell, or a Naismith. And if I ask who has made the greatest contribution to religion, the answers will be equally varied.  Because it's me asking the question my guess is that you will think I am hoping that you'll say: "Jesus!" But no...

darrenhardy.success.com (Google Images) Apart from declaring Himself God, nothing got the Lord into more trouble with the religious authorities of the day than what He did on the Sabbath. Right after He had healed an invalid on the Sabbath, John 5:17,18 says: “ Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day and I, too, am working.’ For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God .” In John 5:19-47 we find a lengthy statement given by Jesus where He clearly identifies Himself as God, ending with: “ If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say? ” We can recite all kinds of stories about Moses but one of the most famous is the account of how Moses received the Ten Commandments directly from the hand of God on Mount Sinai. I got to think...

Google Images As I read through Matthew 9 again this morning I was struck by the diversity of people with whom Jesus dealt. Earlier, in Matthew 8, we see him dealing with two demon-possessed men (8:28-34). Now we see Him with a paralytic and the teachers of the law (9:1-8). Then He moves on to the Pharisees, a tax collector and other assorted “sinners” (9:9-13). Later, in verses 18-26, he encounters a sick woman, a leader in the synagogue and a dead child. Then we have two blind men and another demon-possessed man (9:27-34). Of course, we have to count the disciples—a motley crew if ever there was one! Social class, gender, health, occupation , age—none of these made any difference to Jesus. He dealt with them all according to their needs and threw the “political correctness” of the era to the wind. No one messed with demons, or went against the religious leaders, or ate with tax collectors, or bothered with women, or touched the dead—except Jesus. James wraps it up in his bo...

Google Images It goes against every instinct to allow ourselves to be maligned and misrepresented without some kind of protest. That instinct to defend ourselves is what Peter addresses when he writes: “ For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God…To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly ” (1 Peter 2:19, 21-23). No one was more maligned and misrepresented than Jesus. Yet He said nothing and did nothing to defend Himself. Despite the fact that He had to go to the cross, we would think that He would have liked to have made it clear that He was an innocent man going to an unjust death. But He let people believe whatever they chose to beli...