While I read the headlines and watch news video footage about what is happening to Christians at the hands of ISIS I am reminded of my trip to the Holocaust museum I took last summer with Belle. I was nervous going in because I knew I would see images that would break my heart and I didn't want to fall to complete pieces in front of everyone. Needless to say the images did break my heart and I wasn't able to hold it together the majority of the time but what stuck with me the most among lots and lots of information was what the museum guide said to the kids before we started our tour. I will never forget it, she was an elderly lady, probably a young girl (maybe a teenager) during WWII. She looked at all of us in our eyes and said, "There is a word I want you all to remember when you leave here today and never forget it." We all waited, I wonder if the others were trying to guess what she might say, I was thinking "hate" however that wasn't what she ended up saying. She looked at us and said, "apathy".
The definition of apathy is "the lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern./ indifference". It boiled down to that. The museum guide let us watch a video of concentration camp survivors and they all said the same thing. "People saw us get on trains, get thrown out on the street, stripped of everything we owned and people did nothing." This is crazy to me, or it used to be. Now I sit and watch the leaders of this nation do the same thing. Oh, of course we started to do a little at a time but I just pray that it isn't a little too late. The question in my mind is this, I wonder how many people (women, men, children, babies) would have been saved during the holocaust if social media had existed back then? Have Christians been under attack as long as Jews? No, and we are told we will be persecuted and I know that The Lord's promise is true when He revealed it to Paul in Romans 8:35-37, " Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered" - Good news though, it doesn't stop there. Christ doesn't leave us that way, we have hope! "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."
Do you have that kind of faith? Do you understand that if we as Christians continue to live a life of apathy the same will start to happen here in the United States? In some places this attitude has already begun. Stand firm, know what you believe in and why because we will all have to defend our faith one day, for the Christians in the middle east, their time is now.
