This has been her life for over a year-- fearlessly sharing the only hope we have, tissue in hand that's been soaked up by tears, by grief, by fear.
Yet she stands before me and the thousands like me at my university, and smiles.
This woman is Naghmeh Abedini.
This woman is the wife of Pastor Saeed, held in one of the worst Iranian prisons because he won't renounce Jesus Christ. This woman's husband has been tortured. This woman's husband is choosing Jesus Christ over everything, and it moves me that she glows, overjoyed.
Digging deep into her trial, broken, she hits the wellspring of ultimate joy.
She dares to be more joyful in this great distress because she can draw all the more closer to a Savior.
She boldly owns the passion despite a prime opportunity for hopelessness because in more despair she is given more joy, more peace, than before.
Her challenge that morning is large, but my eyes draw to that tissue.
Her challenge is for people real and raw, broken, yet unafraid.
For people who do let tears trickle at times, yet have the guts to smile because they know God's goodness.
And they can proclaim it.
Yes, proclaim it!
I realize sitting there that I don't have to be perfect either;
I don't have to be put together, to be a happy-go-lucky cheerful bouncing Christian every waking moment to proclaim God's goodness.
Christ met me in my uncouth, in my strange, in my homely, in my corruption, and so I can meet Him, barrier undone by His love, grand proclamations overflowing from a heart that knows a Savior.
And then the bad test grade comes. And the reminder of that endless stream of To-Do's.
Yet His grace still provides goodness to proclaim!
In all things, the most precious treasure must shine through.
Through the pain, through the despair, through the circumstances.
Because really, these enemies of praise are blinded, burned, and belittled to mere scum by the Greatest Joy, without fail, every time.
And that is worth unending proclamation!
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