People are Fragile like Glass

Tonight I finished reading Ten Green Bottles by Vivian Jeanette Kaplan.

An Amazon reviewer said, "...This is a (true) story not to be missed. It is definitely the best book I have read in a long while."

I would second that. From Vienna to Shanghai the sights, sounds, emotions are palpable. The author is gifted in description. One melancholy line that stood out to me, "Her life has been so changed and she has fought so hard for so long that it seems all of the spirit is gone, used up like firewood."

Those words jumped off the page as a friend I had been praying for died a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if I will ever see her again, because in a letter to me she described herself as "not a person of faith". My heart still hurts, but maybe in her last hours she called out to the Savior.

Yesterday, a doctor here committed suicide. What hopelessness around us! People are perishing without Jesus. When I consider that there is a literal heaven and hell and only one way to heaven, my passivity seems scandalous. I don't want to offend, but who am I kidding? May I love people and love them enough to be a speaker of the Truth.

1 Corinthians 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.