Pastor Krishnan told of three Indonesian Christian women who were charged with crimes they did not commit. Coffins had been prepared just in case they got off! But these innocent women were given life sentences. What awaits them in prison -- rape - torture - starvation?
What agony of mind anguishes their families who well know the brutality against Christians? Every day we hear of such cruelty and appalling injustice that our minds recoil and we long somehow to escape. We wonder with deep aching, how can God stand the pain? Why does He not crush us under His heel? If we could, we would change it.
Why doesn't He, He, Who is the Judge of all the earth?
Jesus told a parable about an unjust judge (Luke 18) who had neither compassion nor integrity but granted justice to a woman just to get her off his back.
Then Jesus said that much more our righteous God would speedily defend and avenge His own. Then how come we're not seeing it -- not even slowly?
So often we take verses out of context. As we go back into chapter 17, we see that Jesus is talking about the time of His Coming. I see the last part of Luke 18:8 as the key. "When the Son of man comes will He find faith on the earth?" Will we trust Him through all the horror? Will we remain steadfastly loyal when our understanding is twisted in knots by insane atrocities? As I meditated, the question in Luke 18:8 was tied in with part of Philipians 3:10, "the fellowship of His sufferings". A deeper longing was born in my heart to share in that fellowship.
Paul didn't have the order wrong when he put resurrection before death in this verse. Unless I know Him in HIS resurrection power, I could never stand the fellowship of HIS suffering, could never be made conformable to HIS death. As the awful pictures of world-wide injustice flooded my mind, I was taken to Gethsemane. There, in the darkness, I heard the Saviour say, "Watch with Me" (Mark 14:37) How can I so often be careless about His pain? Here, prostrate in the garden, in His humanity Jesus knows that when God makes Him to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), He will bear the punishment of outraged Holiness as if He were the perpetrator of every wrong. And because He will pay the price, He knows and agrees that God will be patient and long-suffering to sinners through all the centuries until harvest time when the tares will be uprooted and destroyed (Matthew 13:30). Then Justice will come speedily.
Until then, oh listen my foolish heart, Jesus is calling you to the inner circle to watch with Him. Holy Spirit, take me there, to the fellowship of His suffering and grant me wisdom and power in prayer beyond what I can ask or imagine.
