Loving The Word

After Vietnam fell, a translator named Hien Pham was imprisoned in Vietnam, accused of helping the Americans. He was forced to read only communist propaganda which eventually wore him down. He started to think that maybe God really doesn't exist. He was determined not to pray any more or think about his faith.

The next morning Hien was assigned to clean the latrines. This was the nastiest job there was. As he was cleaning out a can overflowing with toilet paper, some English one on of the papers caught his eye. He grabbed it and washed it. Guess what it was? Romans chapter 8, which in it says "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" and "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

There was no more relevant passage of scripture than that Hien could have read in the situation he faced, and on the very day he was determined to stop praying and stop thinking about his faith.

Hien figured out there was someone in the camp using the Bible as toilet paper. So he asked to clean the latrines regularly so that he could clean off more pages of scripture and add them to his collection for nightly reading.

Now my question is this: Do we love the word of God enough to clean off one waste covered page at a time so we can have just one more little treasured bit of it? The obvious answer is yes, but I'm betting the majority of us don't. We should.

Grace and Peace