Ashes and Eyeballs

I love to play with fire. I always have. One year, about this time, I was messing around with a fire out in our fire pit, when a piece of hot ash flew into my eye and burned my cornea. It was so small that you could not even see the wound, but it burned and hurt like crazy.  For the next three or four days, I was in constant, nagging pain. It drove me crazy! If I blinked, it hurt. If I held my eye open, it hurt. I couldn’t sleep. I was too tired to be awake. But that little eye “booboo” would not give me a break. It literally affected my whole person, both physically and emotionally. I am grieved to hear of the persecution in Pakistan of my brothers and sisters. They are part of the same body as me — the body of Christ.  We… WE are persecuted. Not “THEY” are persecuted.  WE are persecuted.

If we are the body of Christ, then we should literally feel the pain of persecution when we read the headlines that 85 brothers and sisters have been killed for the name of Christ. We should grieve for their families left behind. We should grieve for our LORD.  He told us this would happen.

But I fear that American Christians, so often, in perfectly peaceful cities, towns, neighborhoods and churches would much rather remain comfortable and unpersecuted than to feel the pain in another part of our body. The body doesn’t work like that. We can’t turn a blind, painless eye. We SHOULD lose sleep over this.  We SHOULD hurt with them. We should, at times, be ashamed of ourselves for failing to lift them up to the Father in prayer. We SHOULD feel this, if we are part of the body.

There is hot ash in our eyeball. Surely we should feel it.

WE are persecuted.