Sacrifice

"The mountains are rugged, aren't they?"


"The mountains are not so rugged when the Father's bidding draws you forward, the Son walks beside you, and the Spirit empowers you to put one foot in front of the other."


"Why do you go?"


"Because I am alive.  When Yesu wants me to take his message no more, He will let me know.  When I die, that will be a sign He wishes me to do something else." He smiled......"I will likely die in these mountains.  But Yesu may yet have other mountains for me to climb...."


"Why not send younger men?"


"...Romans tells us persecution and hardship cannot separate us from Yesu's (Jesus's) love.  But Revelation warns us wealth and comfort can cause us to lose our love for him.  I cannot get the younger men to go with me.  They want to travel on buses and trains.  They think even thirty kilometers is a long walk.  They are soft.  Most have spent no more than a few weeks in jail.  They know nothing of suffering." 

That's an excerpt from Randy Alcorn's book, Safely Home.  It's about the Secret Church in China, where Christians are persecuted to death for their beliefs, and the sacrifice that has been made there to share the Word of God.

Today as I walked up the path to worship freely at a church in Haiti, I saw a young mother coming down the path from the mountain.  She had a little toddler holding her hand.   They were dressed in their Sunday best.

Before they entered the door, she took her hankerchief and carefully blotted away the shiny beads of sweat all over her face.   Any time you see a Haitian sweating like that, it's usually a good indicator they've walked a long distance.  And to give you an example, anytime a Haitian tells me their house is not far, that's usually at least 1 mile.  If they tell me, "Maybe 15 minutes.", I can plan on walking for most of an hour.  In fact, Rose Bertrand, the teacher up on the mountains, walks over 7 miles, every single day.

The mother was winded.  Her little boy's shoes were dirty with mud splatter from the rain the night before, and so she reached down to the bend in her knees and wiped the sweat from her legs onto his shoes, washing them clean.
After that,  she gathered herself together, caught her breath,  and said to the Haitian in the doorway, "Bonjou."

I wonder if I even comprehend sacrifice. Can the suffering over my lifetime even be measured?