(written Tues 6^th March)

So intently was I watching the almost-full moon rise from snowy mountains through lavender sky that I almost rear-ended the car in front of me.  That same moon just came from Iraq, rising and waning for the first time above the grave of modern-day martyr Jeremiah Small.  He died living faithfully for Christ amongst his Muslim students, loving them and pointing them to Love even as he gave them the gift of an amazing education.

I started reading Martyr of the Catacombs before his death and finished it today, just hours after Jeremiah’s parents met with the family of the young man who shot him to offer public forgiveness-- and after they buried their son.  His students loved him; what a profound impact this is having in their lives.  May the gospel go forth with power and love as a result of this moment.  We worshipped Sunday in two churches where he was well-known and beloved, and amidst the grief the hope, joy, and exquisite offering of praise to God was moving beyond description.

The following quote from Martyr, while long, is worth reading and pondering:

“Theirs was that heavenly hope, the anchor of the soul, so strong and so secure that the storm of an empire’s wrath failed to drive them from the Rock of Ages where they were sheltered.

Theirs was that lofty faith which upheld them through the sorest trials.  The glorified Man at God’s right hand was the object of their faith and hope.  Faith in him was everything.  It was the very breath of life; so true that it upheld them in the hour of cruel sacrifices; so lasting that even when it seemed that all the followers of Christ had vanished from the earth, they could still look up trustfully and wait for Him.

Theirs was that love which Christ when on earth defined as compromising all the law and the prophets.  Sectarian strife, denominational bitterness were unknown.  They had a great general foe to fight; how could they quarrel with one another? Here arose love to man which knew no distinction of race or class, but embraced all in its immense circumference, so that one could lay down his life for his brother; here the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit, stopped not at the sacrifice of life itself.  The persecutions which raged around them strengthened in them all that zeal, faith and love which glowed so brightly amid the darkness of the age.  It confined their numbers to the true and the sincere.  It was the antidote to hypocrisy.  It gave to the brave the most daring heroism, and inspired the fainthearted with the courage of devotion.  They lived in a time when to be a Christian was to risk one’s life.  They did not shrink, but boldly proclaimed their faith and accepted the consequences.  They drew a broad line between themselves and the world, and stood manfully on their own side.  To utter a few words, to perform a simple act, could often save from death; but the tongue refused to speak the idolatrous formula, and the stubborn hand refused to pour out the libation. 

The vital doctrines of Christianity met from them far more than a mere intellectual response.  Christ Himself was not to them an idea, a thought, but a real personal existence.  The life of Jesus upon earth was to them a living truth.  They accepted it as a proper example for every man.  His gentleness, humility, patience and meekness they believed were offered for imitation; nor did they ever separate the ideal Christian from the real.  They thought that a man’s faith consisted as much in the life as in the sentiment, and had not learned to separate experimental from practical Christianity. 

To them the death of Christ was a great event to which all others were but secondary.  That He died in very deed, and for the sons of men, none could understand better than they.  That He is risen and glorified at God’s right hand, all power given to Him in heaven and on earth, was to them divine reality.  Among their own brethren they could think of many a one who had hung upon the cross for his brethren or died at the stake for his God.  They took up the cross and followed Christ, bearing His reproach.  That cross and that reproach were not figurative.  Witness these gloomy labyrinths, fit home for the dead only, which nevertheless for years opened to shelter the living.  Witness these names of martyrs, these words of triumph…”