The Worst They Can Do Is Kill You!

We've been going through some heavy days in our church and community lately.  We've had sudden, unexpected deaths among our folk, including the tragic death of a Christian counselor who was a part of our ministry team here.   Maybe it's just because of what we're going through here, but there seems to be a heaviness throughout our land this summer.  From drought scorched farmlands to bullet holes and bloodstains on theater walls in Aurora, Colorado, it's like we're in some kind of a dry and barren valley.  We really do live in a fallen world, bad things really do happen to good people, and we really don't have answers for it all.  And in our faith system we acknowledge the presence of a very real and malevolent spiritual power that seeks to opportunize all this, to break our spirits, and to separate us from our God and each other.

It reminds we of a very unique benediction/sending forth I heard at a church conference in 2001 in Goshen, Indiana.  The preacher had been talking about how followers of Jesus most certainly would be victims of resistance, opposition, ridicule, vilification, and outright attack, both by people and by the enemy of God, both from outside the Body of Christ and within it.  His final words to us before the service ended were something like this:  "No matter what they do to you, don't worry about it.  The worst they can do is kill you!"

That sounds ridiculous or even offensive, until you think about a follower of Jesus like Paul.  With uncommon resolution, persistence, and joy he took every opportunity to offer the living Jesus to a world that did not know him and was often hostile toward him.  Assaults on Paul, by both humans and Satan, were the likes of which few of us will see in a lifetime:  beatings, banishment, discrediting, pursuit, shipwrecks, arrests, trials - you name it.  Yet Paul was not only fearless, but exuberant.  He said, "For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain."  (Philippians 1:21)  If he lived, that was that much more time to change lives and join Jesus in transforming the world.  If he died, then he would unite with the risen Jesus and all the saints in glory.  Even killing him didn't defeat him.

This needs to be our posture.  The world needs hope in these heavy days.  The Church, the Body of Christ is the hope of the world.  My late, lamented friend and colleague, Kim Maclin would tell us to lean forward into the darkness, do so in the love of Jesus, and keep moving on, committed to leading people in new life with Jesus.   Let's do so, holding one another up, and praising God.  And don't worry; the worst they can do is kill us!

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.