Is it hard to be a Christian? I suppose it depends on where you are and what you are doing. There are people in the world, right now, who are being shamefully and brutally treated because they profess the name of Jesus. But you are probably not one of them. I certainly am not. Who do you know, personally, who has been killed because of his belief in Jesus Christ? Do you know anyone who has been beaten? Do you know anyone who has been jailed because he refused to deny the name of Jesus? I don’t.

I think there are a lot of saints who will laugh at us if someday we meet them and claim it was hard for us to serve Jesus. When the church was new, it was worth your life in some places to admit your Christianity. There were times and places where you were relatively safe if you didn’t do anything. Some of the early churches were born in trouble and never had peace. One of these was the church in Thessalonica–the people to whom Paul’s  letters to the Thessalonians were written.   [Painting: St. Paul by Rembrandt van Rijn}