Word From the Rubble

The fact that God's Word is strong and enduring is reinforced in these verses from Psalm 119:
89 Forever, O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven.
90 Your faithfulness endures to all generations; You established the earth, and it abides.

We can trust in the reliability of God's Word.  He has given us, as the Bible says, "exceedingly great and precious promises," according to 2nd Peter chapter 1.  We can integrate those promises into the situations we face each day - meditation on the promises of God can help shape our attitude and increase our faith, because we know that "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." (Romans 10:17)  His Word has endured, it is tested, it is true, and the power of His promises are available to you.

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The Bible gives great instruction in the closing verses of 1st Peter chapter 1, illustrating to us the enduring nature of God's Word:
22 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart,
23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,
24 because "All flesh is as grass, And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, And its flower falls away,
25 But the word of the Lord endures forever." Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.

We can continue to pray for the residents of the New York City area, as well as the people in Minnesota, in the aftermath of several attacks over the weekend in their cities.  These remind us that we live in a dangerous world, and there are people who desire to do evil, who possess a low regard for the lives of others.  We look to our law enforcement officials to keep us safe, we can depend on our neighbors to be sensitive to suspicious behavior, and as believers in Christ, we continue to look to our ultimate source of safety and security, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Recently there was coverage at ChristianHeadlines.com about a particular discovery made by a photographer, someone who spent nine months taking photos at Ground Zero after the World Trade Center tragedy.   In a YouTube video, he shared about how a firefighter working there gave him pages from a Bible welded to a piece of steel.

According to the story, the photographer, Joel Meyerowitz, marveled that the Bible was preserved intact, and even more, that it was turned to a particular passage from Matthew 5, which says, according to the King James Version:

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” (vs. 38-39).

Meyerowitz stated, "Of all the pages in the Bible that it would be open to, that was remarkable."

In 2010, he began to discuss donating it to the 9/11 Memorial at the former World Trade Center site. In the video, he talks about how these fragile pages survived, and how there is a greater message: "...and it's going to carry some message about the way the word of the Bible has survived through centuries, through millennia of...history."

From this story, I think there are several reminders to us:

One of the obvious ones is that someone working in the World Trade Center, you could assume, had brought his or her Bible to work.  This can speak to us about faith in the workplace.  As the Holy Spirit gives leadership, we can be empowered to live out our faith - that may involve bringing a Bible, and/or it may involve the working knowledge that we are bringing Jesus to work, because He lives in us.  

Another principle is that it is certainly easy to become vengeful when we come face to face with evil - our charge as Christians is not to retaliate, but to surrender people to the Lord; praying for them that God will perform His work in their lives; who knows, perhaps someone can come into a saving knowledge of Christ.  Remember, Romans 12 reminds us that vengeance belongs to God. In a personal sense in our lives, we can put into practice the mindset that when we are offended, we are called to forgive.  

Something else that this photographer brought out: God's Word is enduring - thousands of years later, we still see the proliferation of faith, as expressed in His Word.  The pages of that Bible may have indeed been fragile, but the truth it contained was lasting.   The survival of the Christian faith over so many centuries is a testimony to God's people living out God's Word.   Everything else fades, but the Word remains.