VOMC / VOM Mexico: Shining God's Light in the Darkness

These are certainly difficult times to think of shining God's light as we look at the the events taking place around the world, and actually in Mexico, where this VOM office is working from. Wars, rumors of wars, ethnic or sectarian group against rival sectarian ethnic group, the ever growing threat of disease as seen in the Ebola epidemic striking at least 5 African nations, the march of terrorism and radical Islam seen in ISIS (Irak and Siria) and Boko Haram in Nigeria, the kidnapping, and rape of young and even married women, our youth responding to the foreign call to Jihad, and in Mexico the actual complete disregard in more than half a dozen states of religious freedom, and the threats of violence in a number of Mexican states beseiged by drug cartels.

It may cost us to think of witnessing to others in such circumstances, or lifting in prayer those who so cold heartedly inflict the barbarities on others that we are seeing or reading about. But for such times are we called especially to be a light shining in the darkness... for what we are witnessing is a spiritual darkness and social regression that  has the power to amaze us at the wickedness present in our world. Every day that wickedness seems to come closer as through tv news or social networks we see more and more the depravity of man towards man, in a way that we hadn't thought possible in our own small civilized worlds.

It is urgent that we lift our brothers and sisters in Christ in prayer, wherever they may be suffering persecution or affliction around the world, that we be one with them. It is also urgent that we as the Body of Christ speak out for those who are minority or marginalized groups being victimized at the same time as our own... and lastly, we must, we are required to lift in  prayer those who are the perpetrators of atrocities against the first two groups I mentioned. Christ specifically commands us to love our enemy... and to forgive. It is not a request, not an invitation. We are to love and forgive those who trespass against us, and ours.

We are to lift them in prayer...we are to carry them to Christ if it were possible.
Who else is there who will? if not the Christ followers?

Remember to lift and keep in prayer those whom the Lord has called to shine His light in the darkness,  through their living testimonies of love and forgiveness in the midst of their own suffering and loss... those who are persecuted for the sake of Christ.