May 20 – One Page

A story has come to us “in the West,” of a small band of Christians in an oppressed country where the Gospel had been outlawed and where possessing a Bible was a capital offense.

Bible smugglers, risking their lives, had brought a small quantity of texts into the country and, by prearranged detail, met with a pastor and two of his little flock in a lane.

When the “package” was placed in his hands, tears began to stream down his face and, with a trembling hand, he took from his breast pocket a single page, so old and thin that it was crumbling like an ancient moth’s wing. It was one page from the Gospel of John.

“For many years,” explained the pastor, wiping away his tears “our congregation has met and celebrated all that we had of the Word of God. We knew that one page from this Gospel was worth more than all the volumes of the earth."

One page of the Bible kept a family of believers strong and faithful under the worst of dangerous and fearful conditions. In Cor Unum, every one of us can go to a bookshelf and take down the whole volume of the Word of God and read it unafraid, unhindered.

Here in Cor Unum, if we had to choose, it might be better for us to own one page and hold it in reverence as our access to the knowledge and the fellowship of the God, trusting Him to reveal His mind and nature as we read, than to own twelve Bibles and read them casually, without reverence, humility, faith or delight.


"Feasting"
photo by Kerry