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Our Pastor makes it a point to read about Christian martyrs of the past and present. Partly because Christians are to pray for the persecuted, and partly to orient his own heart toward thanksgiving. <\/span><\/p>\n I admit it is difficult for me to read about martyrs. I remember seeing the book <\/span>Tortured for Christ <\/span><\/i>on my Grandpa\u2019s bookshelf as a young girl. On the front cover was a bony hand and wrist, with an iron chain strapped around the wrist, and I\u2019d heard stories of prisoners enduring starvation, sharp objects being forced under fingernails, solitude for months and years on end, whippings \u2026 <\/span><\/p>\n All because they refused to renounce Jesus. Or because they preached the Gospel. <\/span><\/p>\n The human heart is deceitfully wicked, indeed. And when that wickedness is carried out, those who have found redemption through Christ sometimes suffer immensely. Some, as you know, even give their life for their faith. <\/span><\/p>\n No, thank you,<\/span><\/i> I\u2019d say to myself as I placed Grandpa\u2019s book back on the shelf. <\/span>Who\u2019d want to read about <\/span><\/i>that<\/i><\/b>!? <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Well. Back to thanksgiving. I suppose if one reads about the martyrs on a regular basis, one would have an opportunity to realize how fortunate he is with just the basics. Food, water, a toilet, and a place to bed down for the night that isn\u2019t torturous in and of itself. Not to mention healthy fingernails and unchained limbs. <\/span><\/p>\n However. Because I find it so difficult to read about the trials of martyrs, I\u2019ve kept my exposure to the details at a minimum. I was married for twelve years before I was willing to pick up Corrie ten Boom\u2019s <\/span>The Hiding Place.<\/span><\/i> Shaun wanted me to read it, and he often spoke of those who gave their life for Christ with great emotion. It was only when I began to suffer at great lengths myself that I became willing to pick up Corrie\u2019s account of unjustly being placed in a concentration camp for hiding \u2013 and thereby saving \u2013 many Jews. I needed someone to tell me why Jesus was so great if suffering was so brutal, and I figured Corrie was the appointed gal. <\/span><\/p>\n Granted, I was not in prison \u2026 technically. My body certainly felt, and still feels, like a prison. Suffering comes and goes in severity, but at some level, it\u2019s always there and has been for a good portion of my life. But unlike Corrie, I can\u2019t exactly blame another person for my suffering. I\u2019m not suffering at the hands of a cruel and heartless dictator who rules my world. I\u2019m not suffering because of medical malpractice. I\u2019m not suffering because a drunk driver hit me. I\u2019m simply suffering because we live in a fallen world, and so \u2026 if anyone is to blame for MY suffering, it is Adam and Eve and thereby ME, as I followed quite willingly in their sinful footsteps. <\/span><\/p>\n Where sin is, death abounds. <\/span><\/p>\n But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more (Rom. 5:20). <\/span><\/p>\n I think that is the crux of Corrie\u2019s message. There are great evils in the world, and we are getting what we bargained for when we sinned against God. The wages of sin <\/span>is<\/span><\/i> death, Paul says. Sometimes, the consequences of that sin are inflicted on us by others. On the other hand, as I\u2019ve been repeating lately \u2026 if we are guilty on one point of the Law, we are guilty on all (James 2:10). <\/span><\/p>\n The wages for our sin is death, but thank God that\u2019s only half of the story: <\/span><\/p>\n The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord <\/span><\/i>(Rom. 6:23). <\/span><\/p>\n In other words, we royally screwed up when we sinned. Adam and Eve were warned. It\u2019s not like they partook of the fruit without knowing, at least intellectually, the consequences. But their head knowledge did not get transformed into heart knowledge. The warning from God about consequential death wasn\u2019t enough, and they ate. First Eve, because Adam was such a poor leader and allowed his wife to emotionally lead the couple into partaking of the forbidden. Then Adam, because \u2026 well, I don\u2019t know. Because misery loves company? <\/span><\/p>\n Point is, suffering takes place because we live in a fallen world, and at the heart of the sin that caused the Fall is this: <\/span><\/p>\n An ungrateful heart. <\/span><\/p>\n Imagine all Adam and Eve were given by God. They had everything they needed and more in the Garden, but they went for the one thing (the one thing!) out of (I\u2019m guessing) a million gazillion things God instructed them to avoid. He warned of the consequence of death, but perhaps not being familiar with what death looked like, exactly, they didn\u2019t believe God would carry out the punishment, so \u2026 <\/span>crrrrruuunch! <\/span><\/i>Unbelieving in heart and blind to the blessings given them, they ate. <\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m reading <\/span>Heart of The Trail. <\/span><\/i>It\u2019s an overview of eight wagon train women, and their journeys west in the late 1800\u2019s. Those women suffered. They went without water and food until they nearly died. Some did die, and sometimes their own babies or best friends died. Even their stock died at times because of exhaustion and lack of basic necessities. The picture on the front of the book depicts women and girls in tattered dresses, bare feet, dirty faces, matted hair. The man in the picture looks about seventy-five, although I know he was likely only thirty-something. I\u2019ll never forget the story about how the oxen were dying because of lack of food and water, and so the pioneers ripped open their hay-stuffed beds and fed it to them.<\/span><\/p>\n Without a doubt, I\u2019d be cursing those oxen every night for the remainder of the journey. <\/span><\/p>\n Bleepity-bleep cows!! <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n I read these stories for the same reason our Pastor reads about the martyrs. Their stories spur me on to thanksgiving. I don\u2019t have everything I want in life. Some would tell me that without good health, one does not have much, and I find myself needing to fight that bald-faced lie from the pit of Hell. I never want for water. I do want for food, but not in quantity \u2013 just variety, due to a stomach condition. I\u2019ve never lost a child, save for a suspected miscarriage long, long ago. I\u2019ve never went a single night in my entire life without shelter over my head, save for the times lack of shelter was self-inflicted (camping!). I\u2019ve never found myself walking mile after mile in a day to get to my final destination, no matter how badly my feet were bleeding, for fear that I wouldn\u2019t be \u201chome\u201d before the snow fell. I never had to give birth to a child out on the prairie, without a doctor, boiling water, clean sheets, sterile equipment, clean towels, or a incubator. I\u2019ve never had to bury a child in the desert, and leave her there the next day while I, and the rest of my family, traveled onward and upward. More to the point, in spite of a body of death that imprisons me for the time being, I have been given the gift of eternal life, and the promise of a new, perfectly functioning body in the future. Through Jesus, death has been conquered. <\/span><\/p>\n Truth is, my life is void of many different types of suffering that has taken place in the world. I\u2019m not a martyr. When I travel, it\u2019s pretty cushy. When I need healthcare, I get in my car and go get it. <\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s what Americans have come to expect, though, and that\u2019s a problem. We feel entitled to a life without suffering, and we expect the government to provide not only the necessary, but the comfortable. Even beyond the comfortable, as we also expect a free college education, and the right to spend government issued welfare on whatever we please. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I won\u2019t hammer on that issue long. My main exhortation for the day is just this: <\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019re discontent, would you consider reading about the lives of those who have gone before you, or who are currently living amongst you on this big terrestrial ball we call Earth? If you\u2019re reading this, you have a ridiculous amount more than most people in the world, even if you\u2019re sitting at a library computer or borrowing a friend\u2019s phone. <\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve given you hints as to where you could look for stories of suffering. I hope you\u2019ll decide to dig for some literary jewels that might help you cultivate a grateful heart, because the consequences of not giving thanks in everything can be disastrous. While we don\u2019t want to be morbid or grossly obsessed with other people\u2019s suffering, it is appropriate to be reminded from time to time that what we\u2019ve been given by means of either common or particular grace is, plainly put, pretty darn good.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n **Photo by L\u00ea T\u00e2n<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Our Pastor makes it a point to read about Christian martyrs of the past and present. Partly because Christians are to pray for the persecuted, and partly to orient his own heart toward thanksgiving. I admit it is difficult for me to read about martyrs. I remember seeing the book Tortured for Christ on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2920,"featured_media":2358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[420,759,774,777,765,768,762,22,168,771],"class_list":["post-2355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-corrie-ten-boom","tag-gratefulness","tag-hitler","tag-jews","tag-martyr","tag-martyrdom","tag-pioneer-women","tag-reading","tag-thanksgiving","tag-torture"],"yoast_head":"\n