“How much is this going to cost me?”

This month VOM launched an effort to get 1,000,000 Christians to "confess" to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. We are asking people to confess that they know what is happening to our Christian brothers and sisters inside North Korea, and to confess that they are praying for them as well as for the salvation of Kim and other North Korean leaders.

Two weeks ago today, our sister Asia Bibi was scheduled to finally have the appeal against her conviction for blasphemy and resulting death sentence heard by High Court in Lahore, Pakistan. The hearing didn’t happen. No reason for the delay was announced, and no new hearing date was set.

It’s 9:59 p.m., and I’m still in the kitchen, washing baby bottles. I have just cleaned up dinner and packed lunches for the next day after getting my two little ones to bed. A basketful of laundry, needing to be folded, waits for me in the living room.

On May 15, 2014, a Khartoum court sentenced 27-year-old Sudanese Christian Dr. Meriam Yahia Ibrahim to death. She was found guilty of both apostasy and adultery. Initially, Meriam was charged with adultery because of her marriage to a Christian man, and the apostasy charge was added upon Meriam's insistence that she was a Christian.

I am borrowing a phrase from Glenn Penner to describe the attitude of non-Christians toward Christians in the ancient world. They remembered the lifestyle of Christians before they started following Christ and their previous lives seemed normal, by pagan standards. Now things were different—very different, strange!—and ancient pagans couldn’t figure out what is going on, so they may have asked the question: “What is wrong with you people?”

We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 1:3