Wednesday, April 24, 2024

I Will Come and Get You

Meditations for Ragamuffins

April 24, 2024

I Will Come and Get You

Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying.

John 11:25 

As I read this passage this morning, I keep thinking back to the image from 2015 of twenty-one brothers in Christ, clad in orange jump suits, kneeling on a beach in Libya, in front of their executioners. Someone reported their last words were, “Help us, Jesus!” I suspect their murderers laughed as no one intervened and stopped the brutal martyrdom of those saints of God. The terrorists didn’t grasp the truth of all truths. Jesus didn’t say we wouldn’t die. He said, “Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying.”

So far in my life, I have not run out of options. No matter what the crisis, I have always had resources, either mine, or of others willing to share, to enable me to deal with the crisis. Oh yes, I have been battered and bruised by life; my life certainly hasn’t been a bed of roses. But I have never been without hope. However, my help has always been in me, or in my family and friends, or medical science. Be it a blessing or a curse, I have never been without an option. Both Corrie ten Boom, and Mother Teresa have been quoted as saying, “You will never know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” Our brothers on a beach in Libya came to the place where Jesus was all they had, and they asked him for help.

My Takeaway: I believe the murderers couldn’t see the faith of these martyrs becoming sight as Jesus fulfilled his promise to “come and get (them), so that (they) will always be with me where I am” (John 14:3). (In 2023, the Vatican formally recognized the 21 Coptic Orthodox Christians who were beheaded by Islamic militants in Libya as martyrs and designated February 15 as a day of remembrance of them.)

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

 

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com.

 

Copyright © 2024 by Alex M. Knight

 

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

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