Contentment and Martyrdom

I've been reading through Revelation (it's never the same book twice, is it?) and was struck by this:


[The beast] was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.
   
   If anyone is to be taken captive,

   to captivity he goes;
    if anyone is to be slain with the sword,
   with the sword must he be slain.

   
   Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints. (c.13)


Whether you read this as a future event or one that's already passed doesn't matter. Either way it's scary because it presents a plausible death for any Christ follower. We might die by a sword or a bullet or a bomb. And our profession of faith might be the trigger. 


I think it's a perfectly healthy practice for Christians to consider their own martyrdom. I do it all the time. I hear some horrible, glorious story of endurance through persecution or faithful testimony in the face of torture, and I wonder, "What would I do?" And then I remind myself of how God's grace comes to us in our time of need, that I'm not strong enough or courageous enough to withstand such trials, but that Christ is and that he'll provide what I need when I need it.


It's the gospel, and it's all true, of course, but today I had another thought. What if I'm not calling out to Christ now? What if here in the day of small things, when torture is a clock that ticks too slowly and persecution is a student who snickers when I say I went to church last Sunday--what if on days like these I habitually try to get through them on my own? Will I know how to persevere in Christ under a "big" trial when I can't or won't do it under a triviality? 


I'm thinking no.   


I murder time. I hold the clock in contempt and despise the day of small things, and it’s a flat-out sinful act of rebellion. The small days are just as much God’s unfolding of his will as are centuries and millennia. Same goes for the circumstances that fill them. Cancer and colds are both God's, both to be used as sanctifying means for his children, and we're to seek him in both.

So while it's a hard lesson, and one I'll have to learn again and again, it's always true that I can always be content because I am always in the exact circumstance of God’s ordaining. Whether it's a Monday afternoon meeting or a 7pm diaper change on Tuesday or 4th hour on Thursdays, I'm always where God my father wants me. 


I'm just now learning to see that enduring such times alone is stupid when I have the gospel. I need God's grace to be content where I'm at, and I need to practice it daily, for there can be no doubt that someday I'll need his grace for a day of bigger things. If I'm not depending on Christ now, I probably won't do it later. And that makes passages like Revelation 13 really scary.

good preachin, Pat

Pat Quinn preached from Hebrews last night on Christ being both God's exalted son and our incarnate brother. One part stands out for me, not because it was new, but because it's very, very old, and because I've thought of it many times.

He talked about microscopes.

Actually, what he said was that Christ is Lord over both the macro and the micro, that the creation was spoken into existence through Jesus, and that Jesus now holds the galaxies and quasars together by his power and will. He's the designer, engineer, and maintainer of big things like planets and stars and gravitation and electromagnetism.

But he's also Lord of the small, the atomic and subatomic. He is the strength behind the forces that hold the various parts of atoms and molecules together. After the sermon, as I was talking to the kids about this, I used a spring as an analogy for God's strength in the universe. If I squeeze a spring together and hold it, it doesn't move, but it has energy behind it, energy that would be released if I let it go. In the same way, the universe--at both the micro and macro levels--is being held together by God; and behind everything we observe or theorize, there is great energy. That energy is Christ's hands holding all things together.

The unbeliever looks into a telescope and sees the size and grandeur of the universe and claims that if there is a god, we're too small to merit his attention. But have the skeptic turn the telescope around and look in at the microscopic and he'll see that things go on in that direction in the same way. We're not at the little end of things--we're suspended between, with infinity on either side. It still means we're small, of course, but it makes God something else completely. It puts him beyond size itself, beyond big or small.

Like I said, it's not new to me, but every time I think of it I'm amazed. At any given time, the very atoms of my own body and the world around me are at that moment being held together by Christ because he wills it. How could I not acknowledge such a one as Lord?

Thanks for preaching, Pat. And thanks for the reminder.