Mission Statement

In classical sacrifices, the people get the good bits, and the gods get the refuse, the bits that would get thrown out otherwise.

Not our God. Leviticus (particularly Leviticus 3) describes the sacrifices that our LORD demanded from His people of Israel. God gets the kidneys, the tail, and all the fat. He gets the prime steak, He gets the best.

Today we do not literally give sacrifices of animals. For us the ultimate sacrifice has been made through our Lord, Christ Jesus. But should always be our ambition to do the same thing - to offer God the best of what we have, to offer Him the fat, and not the smoke and bones.

Friday 24 February 2012

Book Review: Green Leaf in Drought

This is the story of the escape of two of the last of the China Inland Mission’s missionaries, Arthur and Wilda Mathews, from Communist China, along with their young daughter, Lilah. (All three were in the last 5 to leave,Wilda and Lilah were allowed to leave before Arthur was.)

This was a great book to read – Isobel Kuhn, the author, was also a missionary with CIM, so she was really involved with praying for their safe exit. She also had access to them, their papers, and a knowledge of the culture that they were reaching and some of the different effects that the communist government had on the missionaries.

I think that the best thing about this book was the fact that their struggles were not minimised. The Mathews had a lot of struggles, and the temptation with many modern Christian books is to minimise the difficulties and maximise the triumphs. This book doesn’t do that – it’s very honest, and I really liked that. It’s important to know that the Christian life is not an endless sea of triumphs and contentment and ease, even (indeed, especially) for missionaries.

So this was a great book on missionaries in China and the CIM.

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