A Lenten Life to Death Request
This week has been extraordinary in some difficult ways. Many of us are digging out of unprecedented arctic freezes, doing all we can to keep our own selves warm and the pipes in our homes from bursting. We’re navigating online school with our kids. We’re also worn thin by the effects of a virus that remains unpredictable and deadly.
But now, regardless of climate or Covid, we get to turn our hearts toward something we know and cherish: Easter. February 17 marks the first week of Lent--the 40 days prior to Easter when we Christians focus especially on the magnitude of Christ’s sacrificial death on our behalf, His resurrection, His ascension to Heaven, His return for His own, and His promise of everlasting life for all who believe.
This week, as I begin my personal Lenten worship, I receive word of a young Muslim woman in a fundamentalist Islamic country who has accepted Easter’s great news. Jesus has saved her, and she’s serious about her new life in him. She and I are alike in that way--we are both true followers of Christ. The difference between us is that where I live, I’m free to choose my faith beliefs and practice, but where she lives, her apostasy from Islam is punishable by death. One of her friends has contacted Say Hello to see if we might be able to help her from afar. Her friend worries about the consequences she might suffer for choosing to believe in Jesus. She would like to aid her emigration.
I have grieved her dilemma all day, but I’m not without hope. I know numbers of believers like her whose trust in God and powerful, (albeit painful) testimonies bring glory to His Name. Only Jesus, the one who first rescued her soul from Satan’s grip, can keep her body from physical harm. I have reached out to others for advice, and I’m reaching out to you for prayer.
There’s an uncomfortable precedent to this paradigm, found in the book of John. It doesn’t justify the cause and effect in question; rather, it reveals the changeless nature of Satan’s ploys to destroy.
A short time before Jesus would be condemned for allegedly misrepresenting himself as the long-awaited Messiah, He worked an identifying miracle in the town of Bethany, where his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived. Lazarus had been dead for four days, but Jesus compassionately and miraculously restored him back to life!
Lazarus and his sisters, along with some disciples and quite a few significant guests had gathered to celebrate the fact that Jesus had raised Lazarus from a very real grave. Mary was so grateful that she anointed Jesus’ feet with some outlandishly expensive perfume. Resurrection from the dead was the order of the day!
It didn’t take long for word to get out that Lazarus and others were celebrating. John records in his gospel that lots of people gathered around because they had heard that Lazarus was there as well as Jesus. Who wouldn’t want to see a dead man who lived again?
It was the kind of wonder that baffled some folk and highly irritated Jewish religious leaders. Indisputably, Lazarus’ resurrected life would prove the truth about Jesus: that He was Who He said He was.
The chief priests were all the more resolute about killing Jesus, but in their minds, Lazarus would have to die too, again. They made plans “to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus.” (John 12:11)
Our sister in her Islamic homeland has received the promise of new life in Christ. Resurrection has become the order of her days! But her redeemed life will threaten those who oppose the truth about Jesus, and like Lazarus, she stands to pay a steep price for her newly-found faith. According to Islamic law, she should be killed.
This Lenten season, as you and I consider all that Jesus gave so that we might have life, let’s remember that Satan still fights the truth of Christ’s gospel. Let’s give ourselves in prayer for those who have yet to hear God’s good news, and for those whose saved lives bear witness to the truth about Jesus. Please pray specifically for this young lady who faces some difficult days forward.