The Promise of Life & Peace

As a kid, I used to play a game with myself called “what would I do if”.

Looking back, I realize how weird it seems, but being a child that hated surprises, and watched way too many horror movies, I found that playing the game made me feel less anxious.

The game was simple, after hearing about some real life tragedy, I would start to come up with “ninja like” self defense moves that I would do if said tragedy happened to me.

I would ask myself questions like:

What if I was kidnapped, what would I do?

What if I was forced to rob a bank, what would I do?

What if I was on the 100th floor of a building and it started to fall over, what would I do?

What if my Barbie's came alive while I was sleeping, after I had spent a whole day cutting off their lovely hair and making them fight my little brothers G.I Joes, what would I do?

I became so good at playing this game that I had at least 5 solutions of what I would do, plus counter measures, for each imaginary situation that I would probably never go through in my life.

Still, in my mind I was prepared for the worst, and that helped me to not be so fearful.

The game abruptly ended for me one day after my dad told me a very sobering story that had changed his life.

He told me of a prison camp overseas somewhere, that had rounded up Christians because Christianity was illegal in that country.

The Christians were tortured in horrific ways and then sent to the guillotine, but not before being given one last opportunity to renounce their faith.

There was a prison guard there that oversaw the beheadings of each Christian prisoner that refused to renounce.

This prison guard saw the Christians as foolish, and could not understand what would cause them to endure such pain, and still claim love for a God that would not rescue them.

One by one, the guard watched as prisoner after prisoner was laid on the table to have their head removed.

Then the guards life was forever changed as he watched one of the prisoners renounce their faith.

In that moment, the guard saw, what was naked to the physical eyes of everyone else, a crown being removed from the head of the prisoner that had renounced.

If my recollection serves me right, the guard also then saw angels all around, whose heads were bowed in solemn sadness.

At this, the guard became so overcome with both fear and belief, that he immediately left his post and ran down to the line of Christians waiting to be executed.

With eyes full of tears, he ran screaming “I believe, I believe, give me his crown, I’ll take it, I believe.”

I don’t know what happened to that guard or whether the story was true or not, but I do know that I asked myself many times what I would do if I was in the shoes of those Christian prisoners and was told to renounce my own faith, or die a brutal death.

For many years after hearing that story, I wondered how the saints of old, and of more recent years, could withstand the terror and pain that surely comes when true persecution arrives.

I wondered if I would be able to stand strong in the face of such cruelty, the kind that leads to death, when I had already found it so difficult to stop and pray with someone that desperately needed the gospel, in the grocery store.

I didn't understand back then, but I realize now why those Christians could face certain death without renouncing.

It was because their mind was stayed on the promise of heaven laid before them.

They were spiritually minded.

They had tasted the Lord's faithfulness, which led them to trust in the ancient words of a savior whose face they could not see, but whose spirit they could feel within them.

They were spiritually minded and received the grace to continue on whatever path the Lord laid out for them because they knew that it lead straight to an eternity of life and peace with him.

Today, as you go about your day, think about the fears, idols and trinkets of life that are keeping you tied down to this earth.

Then surrender them fully to God and receive the peace that comes with having your mind set on spiritual things.