"A Peruvian air force jet that shot down a light aircraft carrying American missionaries, killing a woman and her seven-month-old daughter, was directed on to its target by a US intelligence aircraft that mistook it for a cocaine smuggler, Washington officials said yesterday.
The bodies of Roni Bowers, 35, and her adopted daughter, Charity, were brought back to America last night. Their deaths have caused acute embarrassment in Washington, drawing attention to its role in the war against drugs in South America."
""Yesterday at around 8am, one of our patrols confronted a group of foreigners. They were Christian missionaries and we killed them all," Zabihulla Mujahed, a spokesman for the Taliban movement, said on Saturday.
"They were carrying Persian language bibles, a satellite-tracking device and maps," he said.
The bullet-riddled bodies of five men, all Americans, and three women, an American, a German and a Briton, were found in the northeastern province of Badakhshan on Friday."
"In what the sole survivor described as a senseless, insane and brutal act, nationalist guerrillas last night gunned down seven white Roman Catholic missionaries, including four nuns."
Sure, Christ is under attack in the United States. Sure, at times being a follower of Christ can be difficult. Sure, sometimes your co-workers, friends, and even your family might think of you as being over the top, that you need to tone it down. But, unless i am missing something, no one in this nation is being gunned down for carrying a bible, no one has been executed for proclaiming Jesus to be the risen Son of God. It seems to em that we find comfort here (myself included) in our routine. Church on Sunday for most of us, bible study and prayer for some of us, and a life lived in the world. I don't know that Christ called us to be slaughtered in remote areas of the world, but i do know that John 14:18 "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you." does not mean that Jesus would provide us with air conditioning and cars and sound systems and beautiful worship centers. The Christian life is not supposed to be externally comfortable, Christ calls on us to sacrifice in order to accomplish His work on this earth. I do not claim to know God's way, it makes no sense to me that the adopted infant child of a missionary would be shot out of the sky while traveling into the mission field but i'll bet Jim Bowers accepts God's way.
We all need to challenge each other to be less comfortable. We need to take Jesus seriously and we need to spread the gospel in our homes, our neighborhoods and to the ends of the earth. When things become difficult Jesus will comfort us in a real way, comfort our souls instead of our bodies. It is not the job of "the few, the proud," the missionaries to tell people about Jesus Christ. It is your work as a believer to show the love of Christ in your life, to live in such a way that people will come to you and ask you why you are so different. Attending church in your "Sunday best" is not the beginning and the end of the Christian life. Today i ask that you would read II Corinthians 5:15 and prayerfully reflect on whether or not you are doing your part. He certainly did His part on the cross. Are you motivated by complete gratefullness for your salvation?
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