A MARTYR’S PRAYER: THEN AND NOW

Now may the God of hope fill you with joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.—Ro. 15:13

This beautiful prayer has in it the power to change one’s life. Its key ideas are the essence of the Christian faith: faith, hope, joy, peace, power. Take anyone of these away and Christianity is compromised. Only in this passage are these attributes structured to the superlatives of our religion. God is the God of hope, not only the creator and judge. Faith is that trust that cultivates joy and peace. The power is the power of the Holy Spirit within us, and so we not only have hope but we abound in hope.

For sometime this great prayer from the apostle has been especially meaningful to me, as if it were the quintessence of what it means to be a Christian. On one recent Sunday morning when Ouida and I were driving to the assembly, we allowed this majestic passage to play across our minds, memorizing it and repeating it to each other, and planting it deeply in our minds. We were impressed that to Paul the Father in heaven is the God of hope, and we wondered if the church has yet caught the vision of abounding in hope by the power of the Holy Spirt. What do we really know about the power of the Spirit?, we asked ourselves. We were persuaded that this is one of the great prayers in the history of the church.

About that same time in Zambia, Africa a terrible tragedy was taking place. A dear sister, Elaine Brittell, a missionary to that country for 36 years was stabbed to death as she lay sleeping alone in her quarters, only a few hours before she would have once again assembled with the saints at the Church of Christ mission, which she had done each Lord’s day since she went to Africa with her parents back in 1946. She was 60 years old. When one of the brothers called early that Sunday to bear her to the assembly, she did not make the usual response. Instead of seeing her radiant face, aglow with the Spirit, he found her bloody corpse. After stabbing her several times, the murderer left his knife buried in her throat.

Elaine was one who worked quietly behind the scenes, doing all those things that must be done at a mission station. In recent years she had been working in the translation and printing operation of the mission in Livingstone, a city named for the great missionary. For 36 years she hung in, denying herself of what might have been hers in her native America. At last she died a martyr’s death. When Ouida and I read the news, she asked me if martyrs would have a special place in heaven. I told her that I understand the Scriptures to teach this.

Some days before her death Elaine sent what proved to be the last of her many reports to the Churches of Christ back home, the churches of the premillennial persuasion, that supported her. She wrote like one animated by that special Guest from heaven, who bears the fruit of love, joy, and peace in our hearts. She began by saying:

“This is such a beautiful day which the Lord has given us. Also He has given this quiet time to sit down and finally let you know you are often in our prayers and thoughts as we go about our daily tasks. Praise God, He hears every whispered prayer and gladly begins to answer it according ot His good will. Thanks be to God for His great love and kindness day by day, hour by hour and minute by minute!”

She goes on in her report to tell the American churches what was going on in the mission. Their ministry among prisoners was bearing fruit. “Many have accepted the message of Christ and asked to be baptized into the family of God,” she wrote, and went on to tell how the prison officials allowed them to bring in an extra large bathtub for the immersions. She rejoiced that more of the brethren were volunteering for prison work, and that already some 60 ex-prisoners, who became believers while incarcerated, were witnessing for Christ in their communities.

Elaine went on to describe how the new African brethren long for reading material, anything about God and his word. “My thanks to you,” she said, “who have sent Christian books, tracts, pencils, Bible courses, Bibles, clothing and gifts to share with many seeking souls.” She added that the prayers of those back home “have strengthened us day by day to continue to serve in His harvest field with renewed joy.”

She went on to write of the New Chitonga Bible translation work that hopes to have the complete New Testament by mid-1983 and of the Zambia Bible Training Center. She was obviously very much alive in body and spirit, and rejoicing that her eyesight was holding up.

She closed her report with a prayer, Ro. 15:13: “Now may the God of hope fill you with joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

As in the case of the apostle, it proved to be a martyr’s prayer for the Church of Christ upon earth.

I have no satisfactory answer (theodicy the theologians call it) as to why God allows such things to happen to his beloved children. Yes, of course, he could have hindered the murderer in his evil pursuit of dear Elaine and spared her for many more years of devoted service. We know the Father does sometimes do just that, but in Elaine’s case he did not. He often has not. John the Baptist and the apostle Paul were beheaded when they still had years of service in them. Even young Christians, committed and capable, are taken from us long before they reach their potential for doing good. And sometimes, as in Elaine’s case, their fate is so horrible that we cringe even at the thought of it. I certainly would have attempted to protect Elaine had I been there that night. God was there and he certainly could have protected her, but he did not. Perhaps he did protect her from such tragedy many times before, but not this time. And who are we to question the God of heaven? As Paul put it in Ro. 9:14: “What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be!”

We see through a glass darkly. Once we are able to view things in the light of eternity the skewed things of earth will look different to us. What is tragic in time may not be in eternity. I can believe that faithful Elaine has no complaint to file with the Father as to why he allowed her to die so ignominiously. She understands, and it is all right. That is the believer’s only answer to our kind of world. Whatever happens to us, it is all right. God will see to it, now and forever, that it is all right.

The crux of it all is in that prayer from the martyred apostle, passed along to us from the martyred Elaine Brittell. “May the God of hope fill you with joy and peace in believing. . .” Ah, if we really believed, what a difference it would make! The difference is a life of joy and peace, even amidst tragedy.

“. . .that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” This is our strength and this is our victory, even when we are drenched with our own blood, dying a martyr’s death. Ah, this is our strength and victory especially when we die a martyr’s death.—the Editor