Thoughts On the Word of Life, Death, and Putting All Into His Hand

Every day after school a woman named Maria comes into my classroom to clean. I've really enjoyed getting to know her. Usually I'm grading or closing up the classroom -- and so while we are both doing our jobs, we get to chat for a bit.

The first day we met I had asked Maria about her village. She was telling me about the church in her village. I had asked her specifically about the Bible situation. She told me there were just a few Bibles circulating through the village. She said she was very blessed to have her own, but most of the people had to take turns with them, and not all of the people even knew how to read.

My heart sank. . . The way that Christianity has been spreading through the villages is very encouraging in some ways -- but in other ways it is very discouraging. Many of the villages have combined aspects of the traditional Chewa religion with parts of Christianity. So some of the villages that claim to be Christian are still involved with witchcraft and superstition, not understanding the true essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, when I hear stories about not enough Bibles going around, it makes me feel sick. . . How are people to get understanding unless they are continually being fed by the Word?

I had told her several weeks ago that I wanted to get my hands on some Bibles for the village. Since then we hadn't really run into each other, and Christmas break came up. It had been a while since we'd talked. Yesterday she was heating water in the teacher lounge, and we started talking about the Bibles again. She lit up when I asked her if she'd be willing to go get them with me sometime next week. . . and then told me something that I'm still having a hard time swallowing.

Maria told me that she had mentioned to one of her friends at the village the possibility of more Bibles coming. She said that her friend had just passed away, but she had been really excited. Maria knew she would have been happy to have seen the Bibles! I hadn't even thought of a death occuring in the time period it would take me to find the Bibles. The only thing that brings me comfort is that as her friend waited for the Word of God she was granted her hope in the fullest sense in that she gets to meet face-to-face with the Jesus, the Word of God.

Life is so short. . . Back in December the chief of the village (where we work with the children) passed away. A couple of weeks after that, one of my students wept and wept on my shoulders because her cousin had died from a type of flu that couldn't be treated. After break, another one of my students asked me to pray because her 2-yr-old cousin had died on Christmas Day. Maria's friend, walking on the side of the road and getting hit by an oncoming vehicle. . . Pictures of Haiti's quake and Ethiopian Airlines plane crash flash on my computer screen.

Conviction. He tells me my life is but a vapor! What am I doing with every moment of my time. . . that time which is a gift from Him meant to be spent for Him? What am I holding on to? Am I living first and foremost for Christ, seeking to glorify Him and honor Him in everything during every second? Am I seeing people as dying people and loving them like dying people? Christ snatched me out of the fires of hell. . . So I have to ask myself if knowing this is not even enough to make me love Him so much more and tell everyone that I encounter that they too can be snatched out and saved?

I stumbled upon some more Spurgeon, reminding me to resign all to Christ:

"...Let us learn to set loose by our dearest friends that we have on earth. Let us love them—love them we may, love them we should—but let us always learn to love them as dying things. Oh, build not your nest on any of these trees for they are all marked for the axe. 'Set not your affections on things on earth,' for the things of earth must leave you and then what will you do when your joy is emptied and the golden bowl which held your mirth shall be dashed to pieces?
Love first and foremost Christ. And when you love others, still love them not as though they were immortal. Love not clay as though it were undying—love not dust as though it were eternal. So hold your friend that you shall not wonder when he vanishes from you. So view the partakers of your life that you will not be amazed when they glide into the land of spirits. See you the disease of mortality on every cheek and write not Eternal upon the creature of an hour.
Take care that you put all your dear ones into God’s hand. You have put your soul there, put them there. You can trust Him for temporals for yourself, trust your jewels with Him. Feel that they are not your own, but that they are God’s loans to you—loans which may be recalled at any moment—precious benisons of Heaven of which you are but a tenant at will. Your possessions are never so safe as when you are willing to resign them and you are never so rich as when you put all you have into the hand of God."

Fight for us and with us, O God, that we may love Christ first and foremost and put all we have into Your hand! The fight sometimes seems so hard but You are our strength, the One fighting for us!

The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.
Exodus 14:14

The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise him,
my father's God, and I will exalt him.
The LORD is a man of war;
the LORD is his name.
Exodus 15:2-3