After spending a weekend
coughing and spluttering, running a high fever and becoming very familiar with
how many steps it is from my bed to the bathroom (eight, if anyone else is
counting), it was very tempting to become very sorry for myself, close the
curtains tight and refuse to emerge till God took me home in the rapture.
But after refusing to yield to
the soft option, I coughed and spluttered my way through a healthy diet of
Puritan theology, large passages of Job and of course a dose of Foxe's Book of
Martyrs.
To quote Esau, the biblical
king of hyperbole, “I was about to die!” and so I turned to the comfort of
those who have gone before (in both senses of the phrase) and find solace from
the similar hardships that they had to endure.
Here are just three examples that caught my attention:
1. Peter, a young man, (who lived
in AD 249 under the reign of Decius) amiable for the superior qualities of his
body and mind, was beheaded for refusing to sacrifice to Venus. He said,
"I am astonished you should sacrifice to an infamous woman, whose
debaucheries even your own historians record, and whose life consisted of such
actions as your laws would punish. No, I shall offer the true God the
acceptable sacrifice of praises and prayers."
Optimus, the proconsul of
Asia, on hearing this, ordered the prisoner to be stretched upon a wheel, by
which all his bones were broken, and then he was sent to be beheaded.
2. Chrysostom, was seized upon
for being a Christian. He was put into a leather bag, together with a number of
serpents and scorpions, and in that condition thrown into the sea.
3. Denisa, a young woman of only
sixteen years of age, who beheld this terrible judgment, suddenly exclaimed,
"O unhappy wretch, why would you buy a moment's ease at the expense of a
miserable eternity!"
Optimus, hearing this, called to her, and Denisa
avowing herself to be a Christian, she was beheaded, by his order, soon after.
After reading these and other accounts of Hebrew 11 type heroes of the faith, even in my sickly state I felt ashamed at how quickly I can lose sight of the joy set before me. Weak and momentary afflictions when not measured against things of eternal value and pleasure can very quickly consume and devour us as we become "martyrs" at our own hand.
How often in the majority of christian circles, our "joy" just tracks our circumstances?
O God, give me eyes that see past the temporal and to our Man in glory, Jesus! Scarred but not defeated in the slightest. My home is with Him in eternity!
.JPG)
