Courage Under Fire
I come from a family of churchgoing women. Not only churchgoing, but church-participating. My Grandmother Alcock was church organist at First Baptist Church in Forest City, NC for over 30 years. She only gave it up because she had a stroke that left her paralyzed on one side. My mother used to say that she was at the church more than the minister was, between rehearsing, choir practice, weddings, and funerals, in addition to services on Sunday morning and evening and Wednesday night. When the church replaced the wooden pipes with metal ones, they presented her with one of the old wooden pipes, and it hangs near the piano in my home now. From Nana, I learned the meaning of commitment and the pure joy of music. I love all kinds of music, and I have worshiped God with classical, jazz, praise music, country songs, and Christian rock. When I can’t find words to pray, I let my heart speak in the notes I play.
My Grandmother Smith taught Sunday School for nobody knows how many years. She began to lose her eyesight in her late 70s, but purchased the Bible on cassette tape so that she could still prepare her lessons. She was also an active member of the Women’s Missionary Union, kind of the Baptist version of the UMW. And she put her faith into practice in everyday, practical ways. When anyone in her apartment building was sick, she made them homemade chicken soup. She wrote cards to homebound members for as long as she could see to write them. She visited those who were grieving or getting over surgery or just plain down in the dumps. From Mom, I learned what it means to serve others with the heart of Jesus and to love the Word of God and want to study it and be able to teach others from what I have learned.
My mother, Nancy Ruth, always swore she would never be a church organist, because she saw how great a commitment it had been for her mother. Even though she was a music major in college, she never took organ lessons, only playing piano and clarinet. She did sing in the church choir, attended Sunday School, and was in a ladies’ missionary circle for a number of years. Then she was convinced to play the piano to accompany the youth choir. And when her church added an early service on Sunday mornings, she was hired to play piano for the service. (Her mother must have been laughing her head off up in heaven!) She also volunteered to help with Vacation Bible School every year. From Mama, I learned how important it is to use my talents to serve God, even if it requires more from me than I might want to give sometimes. And I was encouraged in my love of music as a means of worshiping and serving God. And as I watched Mama face cancer over a five-year period, I saw what it means to have a faith strong enough to get you through the toughest things that happen to you.
I always think of these women when I read about Timothy and the faith that he was taught by his mother and grandmother. He learned from them things that carried over into his adulthood, things that prepared him for his work as a young pastor during a period of time when Christians were being persecuted and even put to death for their faith. Paul reminded Timothy of this solid foundation that he was standing on as he went about his very challenging and even dangerous work for Jesus Christ.
Paul reminded Timothy that God does not give us a spirit of fear or timidity; God gives us a spirit of power and love and self-discipline. Our faith makes us strong, strong enough to endure whatever life might bring our way, even if we have to endure some kind of suffering. Paul himself was in prison when he wrote to Timothy, and he knew what it meant to endure great suffering and hardship for the sake of Jesus Christ. In his second letter to the Christians in Corinth, Paul said, “Five different times the Jews gave me thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and day adrift at sea. I have traveled many weary miles. I have faced danger from flooded rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the stormy seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be Christians but are not. I have lived with weariness and pain and sleepless nights. Often, I have been hungry and thirsty and have gone without food. Often, I have shivered with cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm. Then, besides all this, I have the daily burden of how the churches are getting along.”
But Paul did not allow these hardships or this suffering get him down. He did not give in to his pain and fatigue. He did not give up on the mission Christ had called him to. In the same letter, Paul wrote, “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed and broken. We are perplexed, but we don’t give up and quit. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. We get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going.” And Paul knew that Timothy would need that kind of faith in the days ahead to be an effective and strong leader of his congregation.
We are fortunate to live in a country where Christians do not live with persecution or the threat of death for simply practicing our faith. But there are Christians in other parts of the world who are not so lucky. There is fighting between Christians and persons of other faiths in many African and Asian countries that leads to many people on both sides being killed. One such place is Nigeria, where the population is almost evenly divided between Christians and Muslims. There are parts of the country where people of both faiths live in peace, but there are other places where there is constant violence.
When I live close enough to Boston, I like to audit classes at Boston University School of Theology. One of the things I enjoy most about being on campus is experiencing the diversity of the student body. There are many students from South Korea, but also from China, Japan, and many African nations. One of my classmates a few years ago was a young man from Nigeria. Our class was discussing the meaning of Christian hospitality and how the church should practice it. He began to share some of his experiences with us. He asked how the church could show hospitality in a country where it is dangerous to go to church. The church he had attended had a metal detector that parishioners had to pass through to go into worship. It seems that other churches had experienced suicide bombers coming in and blowing themselves up during worship services. And others had people coming in with guns. So they had to put up the metal detectors to make it safe for people to come to church. This young man was planning to go back home to serve a church in this same part of his country. I was in awe of his courage and his commitment to serve the people of his nation, no matter what danger it might place him in. And I wondered if I would have the courage to do the same thing.
Of course, the courage doesn’t just come from within us. The courage comes from our faith, from the Spirit of Christ in us. We trust in God, we trust in Jesus, and that trust is met with faithfulness. As Paul wrote to Timothy, “I know the one in whom I trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until the day of his return.” When we are under fire, when we need courage under fire, that courage comes from our faith in Christ Jesus, the same way that Paul’s faith gave him faith to bear up under his sufferings, the same way that Paul knew that Timothy’s faith would enable him to face whatever hardships might come along.
I don’t know what you might be suffering through. I don’t know what hardships you have experienced. But I bet that you had a mother or grandmother or aunt or dad or grandfather or uncle who helped to instill in you a faith that would give you courage no matter what you have had to face in life. Remember the faith that was theirs, remember what you learned from them about how faith sustained them and strengthened them, and how faith will also get you through the tough times in life. When we need it, we will have courage under fire.