'Harsh Retribution'
Theme of the Week: Attitude Adjustment
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: They do not fear bad news … they are confident and fearless (Psalm 112:7-8). Bonus Reading: Philippians 4:11b-13
The ragged European internees stood in rows in the Shantung Compound courtyard to hear the Japanese chief of police read his verdict. They'd heard rumors of atrocities in other prisoner-of-war camps in China.
The "criminal," standing beside the officer, was a small, bespectacled Catholic named Father Darby. He'd been caught slipping eggs under his cassock as he prayed by the compound wall. He was, it turned out, a key link between sympathetic Chinese villagers outside and the starving inmates.
The chief declared that he was determined to stamp out the black market and would have to make an example of Father Darby.
Would this gentle priest, the listeners wondered, be tortured or only shot? Then came, "I sentence you to one and a half months of solitary confinement!"
The internees erupted in a cheer. Father Darby, they knew, had served as a Trappist monk, thriving in the solitude of the same monastery for 25 years. An experience most would consider hellish isolation Father Darby had come to regard as a spiritual opportunity, affording heavenly peace. And so, as Japanese soldiers shook their heads, the priest marched off to his tiny dark cell … humming a hymn.
—Langdon Gilkey in Shantung Compound
My Response: What negative in my life should I ask God to turn into a positive?
Thought to Apply: Attitude is the mind's paintbrush. It can color anything. —source unknown
Adapted from Shantung Compound (Harper & Row, 1966) by permission.
Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
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Help me, Lord, to cultivate a positive attitude that makes belonging to you look attractive.
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