Through Gates of Splendour

Just finished reading a biography of five missionaries and their wives who served in Ecuador, and God gave them a burden for the Aucas, a tribe who had been mistreated by white men for generations. The five missionaries tried to befriend them, and earn their trust in order to share the gospel with them. Here's what one of the men, Nate Saint said, two weeks before all five were killed by members of the tribe.

"As we have a high old Christmas, may we who know Christ hear the cry of the damned as they hurtle headlong into the Christless night without ever a chance. May we be moved with compassion as our Lord was. May we shed tears of repentance for those we have failed to bring out of darkness. Beyond the smiling scenes of Bethlehem may we see the crushing agony of Golgotha. May God give us a new vision of His will concerning the lost and our responsibility.

Would that we could comprehend the lot of these stone-age people who live in mortal fear of ambush on the jungle trail... those to whom the bark of a gun means sudden, mysterious death... those who think all men in all the world are killers like themselves. If God would grant us the vision, the word sacrifice would disappear from our lips and thoughts; we would hate the things that now seem dear to us; our lives would suddenly be too short, we would despise time-robbing distractions and charge the enemy with all our energies in the name of Christ.

May God help us to judge ourselves by the eternities that separate the Aucas from a comprehension of Christmas and Him, who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor so that we might, through His poverty, be made rich.

Lord God, speak to my own heart and give me to know Thy Holy will and the joy of walking in it. Amen."