This morning I read 1 Peter 4:8 - love covers. I spent time thinking about how love compells and God's perfect love conquers. My thoughts have been winding around some of what I have heard and seen here in Mexico with regards to persecution, what is driving that and how those being persecuted can stand, they can be encouraged and compelled to continue in the call to love others.
I don't know how to measure or rate the intensity of the persecution - no one is being beaten, locked up or dragged and thrown into a fire as other brothers and sisters in Christ are, but as I wrote about briefly in a previous blog, I have definitely seen and heard of Christians experiencing persecution where I am at in Mexico. It is certainly the closest I have personally been to physical persection. It has ranged from what happened to German in his town - the others in the town working against him, maligning him and making things difficult in the town and with the local government, even threatening him with punishment for made up charges when he stepped in to protect his young son, all because he and his family are Christians and from there it escalates. Probably the heaviest I have heard of was actual destruction of property, repetitively as brothers in a small town of 500 were working to start a church. They were first threatened and the local government refused to sign any of the documents needed to obtain the rights to do contstruction and remodelling for the new church. Then when they received help from other Christians outside of the village to overcome the roadbloacks put up (and really received help from our God who led them to those that helped) their homes were repeatedly damaged in the night and time and time agains construction material was damaged - for instance one night about $5,000 worth of cement mix was ruined and cabling and wire were cut or stolen. The 30 or so brothers and sisters living in that small village are continutally treated as outcasts. The really amazing thing is that the persecution is coming from the Catholic community, or at least it is amazing to me. They have a daily choice to make - live out their faith, love out their faith or cower back and be silent, or worse respond in kind.
As I pondered what they have been going thru and their responses that I have seen I came across the passage in 1 Peter. I was also in 2 Timothy this morning, reading thru chapter 4. God used these passages to remind me that first love covers sin - the greatest love of all covers my sin, all of it and the rest of the world's too, including yours. We are called to live in love and forgive in love ... recalling Jesus' words on the Cross " Father forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing". We are also called to live boldly in our love - first for God and then for others. We can do both these because we know who is standing with us, standing for us, standing before us and behind us. We know that He will work in and thru all things that His will would be done and for the good of those who love Him. What a great and simple truth to hold on to - grasp it each day and many times throughout the day and know that when you feel like you can't hold on anymore, He is faithful to hold onto you!
I pray for my brothers and sisters, that they may be strengthened and encouraged - those locally and throughout the world that face perscution in the name of Christ. I am comforted that they will be comforted, they will be blessed. I am also encouraged because the Gospel of Christ is active, the Word is bringing what we are promised it will - it is presenting a stumbling block and division, it is drawing a line and requiring a response. Some may reject and be lead to persecute, struggle and fight against it (being lead by the one that is thrashing his last gasps, but is already defeated) and some will be drawn by Love, be won by Love and will accept the Father's Love that is demonstrated in Christ and being lived out before their eyes by the ones being persecuted.
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