WE HAVE LOOKED at a youth in an electric chair and at a high executive with a perpetual headache. We take another—one between when the props of security go out from beneath us. To be in Christ is the ultimate security.
Two Japanese navy officers met the night defeat came to Japan—one a Shintoist and the other a Christian. The Shintoist said bitterly: “It can’t be true. How can Divinity go down in defeat? It is a lie.” The Christian went to the navy headquarters to find out if it were true. He came back and said it was. The Shintoist replied: “Yes, you have your Christianity; I have nothing but loyalty to the emperor. If he goes down, I go down too. I will end my life.” The Christian took away his pistol. The Shintoist officer went away, and two days later they found him disemboweled. The Christian had something within, held steady, made something out of the defeat. He is now a professor of theology in Kwansie Gakwin University, Kobe, Japan. One was out of Christ and the other was in Christ. Does it matter whether you are in or out?
In a sanitarium, a woman was screaming as if in great pain. One of the patients said to a maid, “She must be in great pain.” “No,” said the maid, “her inner environment ain’t good.” When you are out of Jesus your inner environment isn’t good. The fish out of water is unhappy; its inner environment isn’t good—isn’t good because the outer environment has been lost. Being in Christ is being in our real environment. He is our homeland. When we are out of Him we are out of the life for which we are made. We feel orphaned, estranged. The sickness of the world is homesickness, homesickness for God.
O my Lord and Savior, I come to Thee as to my very home. All coming to Thee has the feel of a homecoming upon it. Thou art the end of my life quest. When I arrive at Thee I know I have arrived. All else is beside the point. This is it. I thank Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Outside of Christ I commit suicide—sudden or slow, I do disintegrate, self-destroyed.
