by David Melton
I like to laugh. In fact, I’m pretty sensitive to the reality that many of us, as we grow older, can become rather humorless, and I want no part of that! When God blessed Kim and me with a little surprise nine years ago named Joshua, we may have gotten “humor insurance” for the long term. Our all-boy, quick-witted, laugh-from-the gut, crack-you-up-non-stop youngest son helps me laugh a lot.
It’s a good thing we’ve got “Joshuas” isn’t it? Frankly, looking around our world right now makes it hard to smile a lot. I cannot remember a time in my life when there were so many hotspots in the world and so many times of crises ongoing at once. It’s a brutal time.
Terms I didn’t even know a few months back, like Ebola and ISIS, are now a gruesome part of everyday vocabulary. Ukraine and Gaza and North Korea are just a start. All of West Africa seems on the brink of crisis and then the whole Islamic belt in the Middle East and western Asia seems to become more complicated and desperate almost daily.
Ministry education for times like these cannot be for the faint of heart. I don’t expect our campus to fill up with young men and women who don’t know what they want to do when they grow up. In these times, we need students preparing for service who have biblical spine, principle, and muscle. I am not about to lie to prospective students and say that if they serve God all their wildest dreams will come true. Maybe in a fictional story that can get you to “vote for Pedro,” but in the 21st century we need a different breed.
I just read today of another Iranian pastor, Pastor Behnam Irani, who has been sentenced to death for “spreading corruption on the earth.” Now there’s a new euphemism for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s on top of the other Iranian Pastor, Saeed Abedini, whose brutal imprisonment is now apparently further complicated by sharing space with ISIS prisoners who want to execute him themselves. And apparently just across the border in Iraq, having any kind of Christian identity can be a death sentence. “Convert or die” is no longer a chapter in a medieval history book … it is life on the ground in many places.
I don’t think we hide from this reality, or shield our young people from it (as if we could in this information age). Instead, we take the journey the Almighty God has handed to our generation. We prepare our students at places like Boston even better than ever. We will recruit for strength, and for those who will face the battle and keep our good spirits with smiles and laughs along the way. We won’t be deterred by viciousness on the outside or the frivolous within Christendom. It’s a mess out there. Let’s be tough enough to stand, but not forget how to smile.
Be the first to comment