As if times are not confusing and crazy enough these days, here come the annual end of year holidays where Faith, Family and Food all mix in a fluid flow of fantastic fellowship.
It is the kind of fellowship which runs for the better part of a month.
It is the kind of fellowship which brings so much joy to many.
But it is also the kind of fellowship and season which brings depression, sadness and loneliness to many!
In fact, this time of year – starting from Thanksgiving week to New Year’s day – is an officially recognized type of depression call Seasonal Affective Disorder or S.A.D.
What an appropriate abbreviation for all of this – S.A.D!
What we find, even in the midst of large groups in some families, community groups, churches and in offices, is the absolute despair and inability to cope with life, as we know it today. Without getting into detail, which we don’t really need to, let’s see this week…and yes, this Christmas season, if we can’t reach out and bless someone who is adrift in such a sea of despair.
Many people do not have a support mechanism or even a friend they can rely on….the type of friend who is a phone call away to encourage and pray with you….the type of friend who is closer than a Brother, like Jesus is! The vast majority of depressed folks this time of year, fall into that category.
Can YOU be that friend….to the older man at work, who has health problems or maybe his wife was sent to a nursing home?
Can YOU be that friend….to the single mom, who has been made to feel like trash by men who gave other men like us, a bad name?
Can YOU be that friend….to that young person in your church, who comes week after week, sings praise songs, listens to a sermon going over her head which means nothing to reality…and leaves even more confused and hurt than when she/he came in?
INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER FOR THE PERSECUTED CHURCH
BACKGROUND AND SEVERAL SPECIFIC PRAYER NEEDS
Most of us will never come face to face with a brother or sister in Christ, from another country, who faces regular and constant persecution by evil – day after day… month after month….year after year….decade after decade!
My good longtime friend and brother in Christ, “P” (not his real name, for obvious reasons) is such a man. Having known this man for about 5 years, am amazed not just at his resilience, but his faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ.
P comes from a family of Christians who have been adopted by a network of local churches in a military pagan Buddhist country not far from India. Persecution range from imprisonment, seizing of property, withholding Bibles, beatings, discrimination in employment and just plain brutality.
But he stands up to them, just as Stephen stood up to the Pharisees…or Peter right after Pentecost. The buddhists are always telling him he is bowing down to Americans, thinking they are insulting him. He then has the chance to tell them he is not bowing down to American Christians but to Christ, the Good News which American missionaries bring!
He then asks them, “where is the Good News of the buddha? Where is it?” Of course they can’t answer that because there is not a shred of Good News in either buddha, islam or any of the new earth/new age garbage promoted by Oprah by ungodly cultists like Eckhart Tolle, Rhonda Byrne, Deepak Chopra and other anti-Christian writers.
Still the persecution P and his people suffer, as harsh and brutal as it is, pales into comparison to what is done to Christians in deepest, darkest African with Christians stuffed into containers in Eritrea. Christians are murdered and their homes burned in Uganda, Nigeria and we all saw the Egyptian islamic regime run over and kill 37 Coptic Christians with tanks weeks ago. …
