As I lay here, 2:30ish in the morning, I am daydreaming. I dream I am giving a lecture. I want everyone to have as much proof as is possible about what I am about to reveal. Get out your cell phones everyone. Google this photo. An SS soldier from such and such time. As they do it I am also doing so on the projector for all to see. In this historical picture is a German soldier from WWII era with a long blonde pony tail. Next I have them look up a picture from long ago of a man in Asia with a long blonde pony tail. We do this with many other pictures. I tell everyone to screen shot each picture so they can study them later. For those of you reading this I think you all know that I have long blonde ponytailed hair. Now everyone can see me, can see that these pictures look remarkably similar to me. So I have them punch my name into the Google machine and see the pictures that pop up.
There are many more strange pictures to be found like these. Some are photos and some are other pre camera media. As I lay here I dream my wife and I were travelling and as we did so we found ourselves suddenly in these different places and/or times. Sometimes we travelled together and others alone. I am comparing to the only thing my mind can immediately conjur. The apostle Phillip as he was with the Ethiopian leader and then was whisked away. Not the only instance in the Bible of a person being here and then boom, there. This is the one that seemed to resonate. For it wasn't that God had just decided that I would make an awesome traveller of time and distance but that in each instance I had taken the Good News to someone who had no other to receive it from.
I kept hearing Paul. I've got to get to Rome. And the people discouraging him. But Paul, if you go to Rome you will be put in chains, you will be beaten, you will probably die there. But I must. I must go to Rome. For to Paul there was something much bigger than he. He would get to tell the most powerful folks in the world about God. About Jesus. About Salvation. Nothing else could matter.
I think we place too much value on this life. We as Christians place too much value on this life. A missionary is taken captive in a Communist or Islamic/Muslim nation and we go to war to get them released. We would have hand cuffed Paul to the railing of the boat to keep him from Rome. Is it not God who moves people so they can share the gospel where they never dreamed? To share with people we could never reach? On one hand we read a non-fiction book of a man who was imprisoned for his faith and every day or week got to witness to a high ranking person unreachable any other way and then through the lens of history we see how that one person's actions caused ripples throughout history. How men and lives and countries were changed by the Gospel. But when it happens in our time.....we do everything in our power to undo what God is doing. To right a great injustice. How can we let a man of God be imprisoned by evil men? Like Paul and Jesus and John the Baptist and nearly all the disciples who readily gave up their lives for something greater. How have we lost sight of the greater picture?
I believe in a powerful God. One who is still doing mighty things. He is reaching Muslim men in dreams. In a given day more miracles will happen than are recorded in all of scripture. Have we become so dull? Can we not See?
I don't think God wastes much time in my life. When I see things they have purpose. Maybe only to remind me, and you, of the bigger picture. Maybe you begin to see pictures of men long ago that look convincingly like me. Maybe.....
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