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Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Today's Frontline Devotion Thursday, June 12, 2003 “On Our Behalf" |
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Frontline Devotion for Thursday, June 12, 2003 By Pastor Justin Lathrop
Last Christmas I was given a gift of a book written about the war in Bosnia in the early 90’s. To be honest, I’ve only slowly read the book, bit by bit, over the last months. It’s engaging reading, but quite disturbing. Reading the diary of a journalist in a dark time and place in our history took its toll. I could only bear to read a few pages at a time before I’d need a break from the atrocities that occurred in Bosnia. I’ve been forcing myself to read it more lately, as I’ll be leaving soon with our Bosnia Mission Team to work with children there. I came across a wonderful excerpt that I’d like to share. It spoke to me the first time I read it, and speaks wonderfully to our James text for today. I’m sure this will come up in a sermon of mine sometime soon.
The main defense mechanism of the people of Sarajevo was to stand together, helping one another out, because no one else would. Suffering does much to bring people together and coax out the good in them, making a hero out of an office worker who, in normal times, would not help an old woman cross a street, but in wartime runs into a street at the risk of his own life to save her from sniper fire. The man might be a Muslim, the woman a Croat. It no longer mattered, for they were in it together, just as they were in the basement chapel together, Muslims, Croats, Serbs, Jews. If you wanted to find the Christmas spirit on Christmas eve 1992, you could do no better than visit Saint Anthony’d Church in Sarajevo.
The priest’s name was Ljubo Lucic. He had no altar to stand on, so only a lucky few in the front rows could see him and the sickly Christmas tree behind him; it had bee scavenged from the forests at the front line, and it looked every bit as malnourished as the parishioners to whom it was supposed to be delivering good cheer. Father Lucic told his flock that they were getting an insight into Jesus that few others has; the terror of their lives was like the terror of Jesus’ life; their poverty was no different from Jesus’; and Jesus was a refugee, cast from one town to another. I could see people wiping tears from their eyes, out of sadness or happiness. Perhaps Father Lucic heard the soft sobs and worried about them, for he suddenly said, almost in desperation, “The Christmas message in our situation is that life is worth living, no matter what.”
From Love Thy Neighbor, by Peter Maas
Prayer: I must admit that often I pray to never gain that insight. But we are called to follow Christ. It’s a scary proposition. Let us pray today in thanksgiving for the suffering Jesus took upon himself for our behalf. Today let’s give thanks for the gift that our lives (no matter how hectic and crazy it may seem right now) are so comfortable. And let us pray for the courage to care for those who are living in suffering all around us.
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