Great Is Thy FaithfulnessSample

GOD’S INK

During a series of engagements in Southeast Asia, I met a fellow from a Communist nation. His smile was like sunshine, and we became fast friends. Tuan’s arm bore a tattoo in Asian letters. The symbols spelled: PEACE. CLEAN. ETERNAL. Tuan explained that he’d grown up with haunting emptiness, and these were the three things he had so desperately wanted as a teenager: a sense of peace, a feeling of being clean, and eternal life. A tattoo artist had inked the three symbols onto his arm.

After high school, Tuan traveled to eastern Europe for university studies, and a girl invited him to a Christmas party sponsored by an Asian church. That night, he was reacquainted with Christmas songs he had heard from the American holiday movies he’d watched all his life. But now he heard them in his own language. He understood the words. In this way, he learned the gospel message and met Jesus. His entire life was suddenly emblazed with the words representing the very things he had so deeply desired: PEACE. CLEAN. ETERNAL.

Today Tuan is back in his own country, facing persecution but enthusiastically sharing the story of Christmas and of the Christ who has emblazed all history with His love.

In writing to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul opened on a positive note, thanking God for them. He added, “[God] will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:8–9). 

The Lord stamps on our hearts PEACE. CLEAN. ETERNAL, and the ink is as indelible as the blood of Christ.

The Bible tells us of the past acts of God’s faithful love that we may be led to set our hope on God, and to feel assured that He who hath helped will help, and that He who hath loved will love unto the end. –Thomas Erskine