At the Core

I remember reading several years back that what is at the core of a persons being is manifested when they are under great duress. When the world and its troubles and persecutions press down upon you, what comes out is what is most central to your heart. If you want to know what someone really believes, test them by pressing down on them - that will show you if their conviction holds.

It's one of the things that gives encouragement when you look back over the centuries to those who were martyred for the cause of Christ. You see them tortured and killed for their beliefs and in the midst of it all you see their unwavering dedication to their faith.

Today is Ash Wednesday and as thoughts turn to the Christ and the Garden of Gethsemane it's good to study His unshakeable faith in the knowledge of what he was about to endure. He was to be pressed down upon like olive pressed by a heavy, stone wheel to make oil. He was to be ground down, beaten, stripped of his dignity, made fun of, whipped, falsely accused, treated like a criminal and nailed to a cross, hung between two theives to die. And who would do this? Those whom He created. But the ironic thing is that He did this for those whom He created. Their greatest act of Evil turned out to be God's greatest act of Good. And the only thing we saw from Christ through the persecution and the pain was a most pure Love than the world has ever known.

Shawn