What or who would you die for?

   Parents often express a willingness to die for their children.  And spouses commonly do likewise for each other.  And yet, we commonly fall short.  Willing to die for our family, yet unwilling to confront the evils attacking our family.  Those confrontations are not very different from the Original Sin.  We allow evil to have a voice.  Then, we and our loved ones are slowly coerced into accepting and eventually doing evil.

   Adam was supposed to protect the Garden and his wife, Eve.  Yet, he allowed the serpent to come before Eve and talk to her.  Adam should have thrown the serpent out before that.  He stood by as the serpent coerced his bride into thinking that evil was actually good.  When she was coerced, so was Adam.

   “But I do not want to have the abortion conversation with others.”  Maybe you are not called to that.  But if the evil is trying to present itself as good in your presence, you have the duty to stand up for good and to call evil what it is.  Will people hate you for it?  Maybe.  But Jesus did not promise happiness on earth.  No, He promised “[i]f they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” [John 15:20]

   To go with that, would you die for Jesus?  And not only die, are you willing to be persecuted for Jesus?  Some of you may say, “I do not want to be that Jesus freak.”  Oh, so you are unwilling to be persecuted for Jesus.  Just because Christianity has been so accepted for the past 1600 years does not mean we should not be like the early Christians that were willing to be persecuted and die horrendous deaths for Jesus.

   If only we could have a fraction of the faith the early Christians had.  Surely, they would look at our times and go, “oh, you just have to worry about people looking at you funny and not talking to you.  You guys have it easy.  We had to worry about being thrown to the lions.”

   All you early Christian martyrs, help us to have some of your faith that we would be great lovers Jesus as much as you, willing to accept persecution and death for Him who loves us beyond measure. Amen.