Lasting Impressions

     Two weeks ago, I spent the day making trails from office to office, meeting new, cheerful faces that welcomed me with smiles and warm greetings to my six-week internship at The Voice of the Martyrs. At the end of the day, I had a flurry of names flying around in my head. I wasn’t for sure who was who or whose office was whose.

     As I struggled to put the faces and names together in my mind, I just couldn’t remember all of the people who I met, but I did recall what was behind them. In my mind, I could still picture the dozens of faces that lined their walls in portraits. The many paintings, photos and murals of persecuted Christians stuck out to me. I could see their faces clearly: joyful smiles, determined brows. Their attitude of hope through sacrifice grabbed me more than anything. Along with these touching portraits, I found maps in almost every room. The outlines of countries seemed to represent the borders that The Voice of the Martyrs reaches out to every day. I am really learning to appreciate the faces and maps that remind me of the international and personal focus here.

     The faces also burdened me as I saw Christians chained, cuffed and held down for their beliefs. I began to ask myself this question: Why are Christians persecuted?

     Although I don’t think that I will ever really understand why people persecute others because of their faith, I think that there could be a few reasons for this. Maybe they are afraid of the success of Christianity. They fear change. They fear that the grace and truth of Christianity might disprove the religion that they have followed all of their lives. They have anger or stress that they think they can get rid of on someone else. In their pride, they grapple to increase their ego by putting someone else down. They desire to have control over something, and force is how they go about getting it.

     But the pictures in the offices have reminded me of what persecuted Christians’ response is to persecution: Not fear but courage, not hate but love and not pride but humility. They desire to relinquish all control to serve their God, and sacrifice and surrender is how they go about it.

     I pray that a picture of these beautiful faces is not something that I can shake off, and I hope you can’t either.