This season....

There are many people who are stressed during this time of year. Problems with gifts and with money and sometimes with family too! All of these add up to stressful times for lots of people, and this is supposed to be a time of year when we are enjoying each other's company and the time that we should be spending with our families! What in the world has happened to our country and our culture-- that allows so much heartache and turmoil during a season which is supposed to point us in a direction totally away from what we see on the news every day?

Our lives, and the culture which we have allowed to develop around spending money for things, are supposed to be about much more than this! We are living in a time which most people of two hundred years ago would call almost magical in content and abilities! Boxes which can cook a meal in just a few seconds, boxes which keep food frozen and fresh for days, electricity which can make our homes comfortable during the warmest times of the year and warm during the coldest, these weren't heard of or conceived during the times around the early years of the 1800's!

Yet, as common as they are today, there are areas in our world where people still don't have these "luxuries" on a daily basis. Many places still don't have reliable Internet access or electricity or running, clean water! We take these things for granted, and to us they are necessities, but to others in so-called "developing countries, the stuff that we have and depend on daily is just that--stuff, luxuries, things which are not necessities of living. The one thing that many people in developing countries do have that we are in need of is---faith!

The faith of Christians in African countries such as Kenya and Nigeria, where they are persecuted and killed for their faith is remarkable! It is also humbling to me because we tend to think that we are..well, better off and more "tuned in" to God than they are. When the fact is that they have a deeper more abiding faith than most Christians in the world today!

We need to pray that those Christians in persecuted countries will have the protection of their angels and that our faith will grow so that we need not be ashamed when we meet them one day in eternity!