No Turning Back
Christians can be a sorry lot. I do not exclude myself from that group.
Following the footsteps of Christ is not meant to be easy, yet throughout history humans have been willing to trade this life for love of Him.
What faith is this that can inspire devotion to a man who lived and died and lived again thousands of years ago?
We cling to the sweet fragrance of a God who is there, the God who created the tiny purple shells on the beach, the sweet breath of a puppy and fiery sunsets so exquisite that it aches to look at them.
The days grow short; is it only my old eyes that see that?
Yet the darker the night, the brighter the light that pierces it.
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The eye is the lamp of the body.
If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.
If then the light within is darkness, how great is that darkness?
******************** In India in the 1880s, a man, his wife and children became followers of Christ. This was not an easy decision in their village, whose males collected human heads to prove their manhood.
The Christ follower and his family were arrested and brought to the center of town, where the village chief demanded they renounce Christ. Each time the father responded resolutely, “I have decided to follow Jesus.”
This angered the village chief, who thought he could persuade a change of heart by ordering the murder of the man’s children.
As his children’s pierced bodies lay on the ground shot through with arrows, the man was asked again, to which he responded by singing this: “Though no one joins me, still I will follow, no turning back.
“No turning back.”
Now the wife stood in front of the executioners, but her husband said, “The world can be behind me, but the cross is still before me.”
His death imminent and indeed his cross before him, the man looked at his loved ones’ bodies and said, “Though no one is here to go with me, still I will follow Jesus.”
News of this martyred family spread throughout India and then the world; eventually even those who participated in their murders understood the love of Christ that enables humans to rise above our mean little lives to love others in a way we could not otherwise.
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