There is a “cloud of witnesses” to greet me. The host of angels who rejoiced at my repentance are present, rejoicing still and worshiping the Lamb. The burden and weight of fleshly pain and any care of the world is forgotten. I imagine opening my eyes and truly seeing for the first time-there is light everywhere. What do we have to look forward to in eternity? Sometimes my imagination is vivid. Why? Because to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Phil. The world, “sons of wrath,” have every reason to fear death, but the spirit of power which sons of God have been given provides a confidence in life that shows no fear of death. It seems that some good Christian people fall into the same pattern of fear to which the world around them naturally falls prey. More than feeling secure in life, ultimately, God’s children should not even remotely fear death itself. He is the one big enough to handle these big problems “according to his riches and glory.” Yet it’s by God’s own power that we are able to function and even thrive without fear. When we look at ourselves and our ability to control the situation, we see how weak we are-how small we are compared to the problem. All of these things were realities whether we lived in fear or not, and if we allowed ourselves to imagine that any of that was truly in our hands we would become afraid. We were concerned about venomous snakes both indoors and out. The capital city where we did our grocery shopping wasn’t considered the safest place in the world. Our financial situation as missionaries wasn’t necessarily stable. The possibility of civil or governmental unrest were constant. We were confronted with the prospect of viral hemorrhagic fever in West Africa, not to mention malaria and Typhoid fever. Whenever this children’s song plays (and I will have it stuck in my head for days after), I remember a lot of our time in “the jungle.” We were sometimes confronted with things that might have given us cause to fear, but we knew and chose to believe that any anxiety we experienced was not something God had given to us.Īs natural and understandable as our fears were, they came from something other than the Lord. One children’s song that she listens to puts these lyrics to a catchy tune: “Walking in the jungle, walking in the jungle I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid.” Although the region in Togo where our hospital operates isn’t full-on jungle, it is a rainforest setting.
She’ll often come up to us and request a certain song “on the TV” because she enjoys watching the video associated with the music. Our two-year-old likes to listen to music on YouTube.
0 kommentar(er)
