Welcome New Beginnings
In exploring the global need to come alongside those who are paying the ultimate price for their faith and the freedom to express such convictions, I, too, have been compelled to become the hands and feet of Jesus in the deepest expression of God’s love and protection through the faithful staff and constituents of The Voice of the Martyrs.
The plight of those caught in the perils of persecution is often overwhelming in the physical and spiritual realms, though we know that our God is able, and that His love transcends and illuminates even the darkest temporal realities. Our brothers and sisters who suffer for Christ face many dark hours when your faith, through prayer, mystically sustains them. When it may appear hopeless and the well is seemingly dry, there is hope. Yet from where does this hope come?
Jeremiah, presumed to have authored the book of Lamentations in 586 BC, was perhaps one of the saddest prophets of the Old Testament. Aptly named, given the prophet’s expressed outlook on his circumstances, Lamentations reflects the unimaginable pain and sense of abandonment that Jeremiah felt as he gazed and reflected upon the Babylonian aftermath of the utter destruction of Jerusalem. The book, comprised of five poems, reveals his unrelenting despair and sense of hopelessness through to the very last verse, except for one remarkable passage right in the middle of the book. Perhaps ironically, the book of Lamentations, which generally expresses sorrow with little hope, has produced one of the most beautiful and strangely inspiring passages on renewed hope in Lamentations 3:21-24 (KJV), as follows:
“This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him.”
It is as if during Jeremiah’s darkest hour, our Lord God reached down and touched his soul as a loving and gentle reminder that He would be with His people forever, and will continually provide for their needs, transforming their hopelessness into a wellspring of living hope. God’s ultimate salvation, assuredly to come 586 years later in the birth of our Lord, was not just a one-time event. It actually initiated a living, organic process of re-creation and reconciliation, as all who believe in Him accept the gift of His life, lovingly sacrificed to purchase ours.
He is clearly a God of new beginnings, and it is the transformative power of His salvation through Jesus that is at work and new every morning – renewing our lives and circumstances. I have imagined that the brave and persecuted souls whom we serve through The Voice of the Martyrs can and must take refuge from those darkest moments, finding a powerful hope that gives them strength well beyond their own unimaginable ability to actually express God’s love to their captors.
May you be blessed as you bless those who are persecuted for Christ. Thank you for your continuing support of this ministry.
- Doug
