Comfortably Removed

2 Corinthians 3:14 – But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. (NIV)

How many times have you and I been comfortably removed from a situation, one that we thought did not involve us? As a Christian, involvement is what God calls obedience, and there is no way in which we can risk not getting involved.

Recently, our minister told us about a situation in the southern part of the United States of America over forty years ago. Since we live in Canada, we did not have that as a problem. We were comfortably removed from the situation. Our minister was trying to rattle our cages, and wake us up to the fact that we as Christians can never be comfortably removed from a situation just because it is not in our own back yard.

Here are two other terrible examples. During the Second World War, governments of two supposedly Christian nations in North America took over the homes of Japanese people living on the West Coast and put them into war camps, because they were deemed a threat to national security. Also during that same war, a ship loaded with Jewish children arrived on the Canadian shore asking for refugee status. They were denied. They sailed down the coast of the United States and met with the same response. The ship and its precious cargo returned to Germany and most of those children died in the holocaust.

I could sit back and say I couldn't have been responsible, as I was too young and comfortably removed from both of these situations. But where were the Christian people who could have done something about these atrocities?

All over our world today atrocities are occurring, some involving Christians who are being persecuted for their beliefs, and some involving Christians who are doing the persecuting. As long as we can write letters to governments protesting these atrocities, we can never say that we are comfortably removed from those situations.

Prayer: As we sit in our comfortable homes, God, please never let us be comfortably removed from these situations. God help us to take heed. Amen.

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