The Amazing Three Day Beauty Treatment - by Debby Kloosterman

I love the Bible trivia quiz on our local Christian radio station!  Recently, the question was based on the Old Testament Book of Esther.  The Book of Esther is a wonderful story of how God uses ordinary people to accomplish His will (but I digress).

In order for Esther (formerly Hadassah) to enter the presence of King Xerxes, she had to undergo 12 months of beauty treatments.  My response to this was that even I could be suitable to meet a king after 12 months of beauty treatments!

On second thought…

The only king I know is Jesus and no matter what I do I will never be “good enough” to meet God’s standard of perfection.  The fact is that a year’s worth of beauty treatments and special foods are not what is required.  Jesus provided an amazing 3-day beauty treatment!  Through his death and resurrection, he paid the total price for me to approach the throne.  I only need to ask Him to be my savior and serve as my master and I am saved from my ugly sinful nature.  As the old hymn proclaims, “Though my sins were as scarlet, He washed them white as snow.”

It's that Simple - by Susan Jensen

One Sunday when we were out of town, we visited another church. We found a seat behind a young family and I was immediately taken by the little girl in front of us. When it came time to sing, she was so enthusiastic. She would clap (immensely off-beat) but with extreme joy for the Lord. She even used sign language to sign Jesus’ name by pointing to the palms of her hands signifying the nails He took for us. She raised her hands in praise to God with the biggest smile on her face.

After the singing was over she took her place back in the pew. Out of the bag she had brought to church she pulled her Children’s Bible. As the preacher spoke, she seemed to truly devour the stories in her Bible.

This young girl had obviously been raised as a tiny disciple by loving parents and maybe even Christian Ed teachers. She was so eager to just praise and worship God for His unfailing gift to us. I sat behind her in awe asking God to fill me with joy for Him - just like hers.

Then I realized, deep inside most of us all want to be that little girl… deeply in love with God, and deeply wanting to please Him, and wanting to be in perfect communion with Him. Once you know that deep love of God, once you know how much joy the precious free gift of Jesus brings to your heart, then why would you ever hide that under a bushel?

Take time this summer, make a list, and begin inviting others to join you here at Redeemer United Methodist Church in DeWitt. It’s that simple! Once we do our part to invite someone into the presence of God, step back and let the Holy Spirit do the rest. He will never fail us!

 “No one lights a lamp, then hides it in a drawer. It’s put on a lamp stand so those entering the room have light to see where they’re going.” Luke 11:33

Let’s share that light with the world!!

Contentedness - by Ben Barnes

We haven't been sleeping a lot at the Barnes house lately. The new baby has been setting our schedule and she seems to think that the world (and our sleeping patterns) should revolve around her. Don't get me wrong - my life most certainly does revolve around Emaline. But I also have a job to do, a new house to get set up, and a yard that constantly needs to be mowed. My to-do list hasn't been completed in nine weeks... and it keeps getting bigger. Most days, I spend more time trying to keep a tiny baby from crying than I do walking behind a dirty old mower or unpacking boxes.

And, to be honest, I'm just fine with that.

Over the past eight or nine weeks, I've had to learn a little bit about being content.  Instead of getting my list of chores done, I have learned to be okay with just holding my sweet baby. Though I have a list of things that are constantly pulling me to get moving and accomplish something, I've started to realize that the list is nowhere near as important as being with my family.

Phillippians 4 talks about the fact that Paul learned to be content in just about any situation.  He gives the secret to the contentedness, which I think of daily as my grass keeps getting longer. 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.'

Are Christians Being Persecuted? - by Pastor Rod

Recently, I had the privilege of meeting a young Chinese woman who has been studying in the states but will soon be returning to her homeland as a university professor.  She introduced me to two other of her family members, as well.

The young mother has become a Christ-follower – and has been praying for her family to also become believers.  All three have now become Christ-followers and affirmed that commitment this weekend by being baptized.  It was a God moment.

But in the joy of the Sacrament was also a note of caution.  They are cautious about proclaiming their belief publically for fear that when they go back to China there will be persecution.  Religious persecution is a fact in many places of our world today.

Last week we read of the Yazidi sect (a Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious group living in the mountains of northern Iraq that draw from Christian, Muslim and other neareastern religious beliefs) that is under siege in Iraq by the Islamic State jihadist group. “We are being slaughtered, annihilated,” Yazidi MP Vian Dakhil declared. “An entire religion is being wiped off the face of the Earth. I am calling out to you in the name of humanity!” she said. “In the name of humanity, save us!

Tens of thousands of Yazidi members are trapped on Mount Sinjar in Iraq without food and water. With summertime temperatures nearing 100, they are dying of thirst.  If they choose to descend, they face being killed by Islamic State fighters, formerly the ISIS, which has taken control of vast swaths of Iraq, eliminating anyone who won’t join them, particularly Christians and other non-Muslims.

There are now are only a handful of Christians, if any, left in Mosul, where believers have lived for two millennia.

Archbishop Athanasius Toma Dawod of the Syriac Orthodox church said that Isis's capture of Qaraqosh, Iraq's largest Christian city, had marked a turning point for Christians in the country. "Now we consider it genocide – ethnic cleansing," he said. "They are killing our people in the name of Allah and telling people that anyone who kills a Christian will go straight to heaven: that is their message. They have burned churches; they have burned very old books. They have damaged our crosses and statues of the Virgin Mary. They are occupying our churches and converting them into mosques."

Another news story that hit the headlines recently spoke of managers of a shopping mall in Dublin, Georgia, who told a group of visitors they were not allowed to pray in the facility – not even over their lunches in the food court…but have starting to backtrack after headlines exposed the policies of the facility.

From verbal harassment to hanging, persecution for professing faith in Christ is as old as Christianity itself, often comingling with ethnic violence and geo-political conflict.

Most people in the West would be surprised by the answer to the question: who are the most persecuted people in the world? According to the International Society for Human Rights, a secular group with members in 38 states worldwide, 80 per cent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians.

The Centre for the Study of Global Christianity in the United States estimates that 100,000 Christians now die every year, targeted because of their faith – that is 11 every hour. The Pew Research Center says that hostility to religion reached a new high in 2012, when Christians faced some form of discrimination in 139 countries, almost three-quarters of the world's nations.

All this seems counter-intuitive here in the West where the history of Christianity has been one of cultural dominance and control ever since the Emperor Constantine converted and made the Roman Empire Christian in the 4th century AD.

Yet the plain fact is that Christians are languishing in jail for blasphemy in Pakistan, and churches are burned and worshippers regularly slaughtered in Nigeria and Egypt, which has recently seen its worst anti-Christian violence in seven centuries.

Persecution is increasing in China; and in North Korea a quarter of the country's Christians live in forced labour camps after refusing to join the national cult of the state's founder, Kim Il-Sung. Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Maldives all feature in the 10 worst places to be a Christian.

The reality of being a Christian in most of the world today is very different. It only adds to their tragedy that we in the Western church fail to understand that – or to heed the plea of men such as the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem Fouad Twal when he asks: "Does anybody hear our cry? How many atrocities must we endure before somebody, somewhere, comes to our aid?"

So how should we respond?  What can we in the church do?  I’d like to hear your ideas?

Brother Andrew, founder of Open Doors, offers this challenge:

“Christians have an answer in those situations that the world does not know anything about. But as followers of Christ, we must take a bold step: we must shed the “enemy image” we have of those who persecute us. Because the moment we have an enemy image of anyone, God's love can no longer work through us to reach them! We must pray for and even love those who hate us.

So in reality, the way Christians live out their lives before others is the most powerful message we can share. It far transcends the words or methods we may try to employ to impact a needy world in the face of the challenging question, “Who is God?” Christians must be able to point to our hearts and say, “Here is God! He lives in me. And I'm willing to die for Him, and I'm also willing to die for you because that's what He did for us on the cross at Calvary!” Nothing else will work in this age of confrontation unless and until every Christian is not only willing to give their lives, but one day actually does it.

I challenge the Christians of the world to pray for their persecuted brothers and sisters, to act on their behalf and to live out the life of Jesus in this needy world around us. Only then we will see a radical change take place in the lives of people. Only then we will see the love of Christ replace the hatred of this world.”

Box of old letters - by Jack Hanneman

I recently had been cleaning out a closet in our basement when I ran across a box full of old letters. I reached in and picked one out. It had been a letter written to me from my grandfather (Lester Smalley 1917-1984). He had written this letter back in the late sixties. He was always good about writing, and as a child, receiving a letter in the mail was the equivalent to receiving a gift from Santa.

The letters were always inquires to how things were going in my life (i.e.) school, sports, hunting, and fishing. He would already know the answer to his inquires as he would call my mother frequently, but the letters were directed to me specifically as to garner a response. He would always send a tidbit of wisdom in his letters, something that would make you ponder for a moment. The letters were always warm and positive, meant to encourage and inspire a young mind. Each letter sent would always be accompanied by a single stick of Juicy Fruit Gum, and I generally wasted no time inserting that gum into my mouth as I read the letters.

The letters would come randomly throughout my adolescence and into my adulthood. After reading his letters I would always take a few moments to write back and let him know how things were going. As the years went on and my grandfather’s health started to wane, he was sent to the V. A. Hospital, he was suffering from stomach cancer and his time was short. I wrote him one last letter. Within that letter I thanked him for being an inspiration in my life and teaching me the value of relationships. And that those letters over the years had lifted me up during some of the most difficult times of my life. I told him that I was eternally grateful to have had such a wonderful grandfather as he was.

Those letters are a warm memory of a time long since passed, but filled with the joy of a wonderful relationship between a devoted loving grandfather and his grandson.

Perhaps this letter will inspire you to write a letter to someone whom you care about or haven’t kept up with over the years!

God Bless,
Jack Hanneman