T.Z. Koo tells of his experience during an air raid in the days when the Japanese sent planes in wave after wave over China. “We had to go out into the fields because we had no dugouts in the city. Everybody took his rug and waited. Soon the final warning sounded and we knew that in ten minutes the planes would arrive. In that short ten minutes I lived through the experiences of a lifetime. A feeling of utter helplessness swept over me. The usual things
with which we surround our lives suddenly lost their significance. Most of us had been thinking that if we had money in the bank we would be fairly secure; but as I sat on that rug waiting, I realized that no amount of money, not even of American dollars, could be of any help to me. I use to pride myself on the fact that I was a University man; but what could a Ph.D. do for me as I sat on that rug waiting until I saw that out there under the sky in the fields I was before my Maker just as I was, stripped of everything, nothing more in life to fall back on. And my lips began to whisper, ‘Yea though I walk in the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me.’ That was no doctrine then. It was no precept in a code of ethics. It was not a beautiful phrase in a poem. It meant that I was no alone, that I had found something in life which even war could not wipe out! I discovered the presence of God.”
There is no discovery that you can make in life that is more meaningful, more powerful, more comforting than “the presence of God.” Jesus’ departing words to his disciples were, “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Have you discovered God’s presence in your life? Hopefully, it will not take the threat of death for you to make this discovery.
In His Love,
Charles
