By Jon Bloom, DesiringGod.com.
This weekend Americans will commemorate Memorial Day, a holiday of collective national remembrance. Many will gather in cemeteries and civic parks for grateful and sometimes tearful ceremonies. This will be a good and appropriate kind of remembering. It is important that we remember the immense price hundreds of thousands of soldiers have paid with the currency of their life-blood so that we can enjoy our political and religious freedoms.
But this kind of remembering will not demand much of us beyond renewing our grateful resolve to not take for granted our freedoms. There will be a brief recollection, hopefully a prayer and then we’ll move on with our leisurely plans.
A demanding remembering
But a Memorial Day kind of remembering will not suffice for our suffering Christian brothers and sisters. The remembering that God requires of us demands sustained action:
Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. (Hebrews 13:3)
When the author of Hebrews tells us to “remember,” he isn’t talking about a fond, grateful private reflection. What he means is, “go help them,” and the original Greek conveys the sense, “keep helping them.” When we remember our war dead, we don’t remember them as though we were dead with them. But we are to remember the imprisoned Christians “as though in prison with them.” That is a demanding remembering.
We are to remember mistreated Christians as though we were sharing mistreatment. We are to react to our brothers’ and sisters’ affliction just like our entire body reacts to the pain when one member of our body is afflicted. That is a demanding remembering.
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We need to remember what this weekend is all about. Imagine that it is a peaceful Sunday and that you are sitting in your home church pew worshiping and praising God. Suddenly armed men burst into your church. They point their guns at the congregation and tell your congregation to stop worshiping God. They tell you that you are to worship God in their way. How would you feel? And yet we take it all for granted. These brave women and men gave up their lives so that we can worship God in our own way.
The greatest realistic hope for persecuted Christians is a restored America. There are plenty of examples here in this country of growing soft-persecution that will eventually lead to hard persecution. A restored America, including a revitalized church, can then take action. It is way past time or American Christians to wake up. We’ve nearly lost both our Republic and our churches.
The greatest realistic hope for persecuted Christians is the swift return of the Lord Jesus Christ. Please do not make America into an idol.
“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.” (Rev. 6.9-11)